Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

Give Us Scientific Proof For Creationism


Ouroboros

Recommended Posts

Christians,

 

This is a topic addressed to Christians who do not believe in Evolution, but believe in an alternative explanation, like Creationism.

 

If you believe in Theistic Evolution, and there's an interest in discussing that and how it stands versus Natural Evolution, then we can create a topic for that too.

 

But for now, lets keep this thread to one, just one single issue: What evidence is there for Creationism.

 

Lets us loosely define Creationism:

 

It's the believe that a Divine Creator did not use Evolution to create the biological life on this planet, but rather instantaneously and magically made plants, animals, insects, and humans appear just by speaking words.

 

(So LNC, you don't fit the topic, since you would fall into the Theistic Evolution, and not Creationism, m'kay.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"You don't see evidence of an explosion when you look around you, do you?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"That thar Bible is all the proof I need!"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't know we had so many Christians here. :grin:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How did life come from an explosion? When you see an explosion, you don't see life being made (I actually used this one as a xtian)! And I ain't never seen a monkey turn into a human before!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How did life come from an explosion? When you see an explosion, you don't see life being made (I actually used this one as a xtian)! And I ain't never seen a monkey turn into a human before!

No, but every Christian is a human turned into a monkey! :HaHa:

 

I think all these arguments points to exactly the problem with Creation Science, it doesn't exist. They don't have a science. Their only way to argue Creationism is to criticize the alternatives.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, Hans,

 

I will readily admit knowing little about this subject, but let me tell you what I think and then you tell me if I fit the classification you are looking for.

 

Gen 1:20 ¶ And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good

 

How is this Scripture inconsistent with evolutionary theory?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Davka

Ok, Hans,

 

I will readily admit knowing little about this subject, but let me tell you what I think and then you tell me if I fit the classification you are looking for.

 

Gen 1:20 ¶ And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good

 

How is this Scripture inconsistent with evolutionary theory?

 

1 - This isn't creationism, it's guided evolution. It needs it's own thread.

 

2 - If it weren't for the fact that Genesis has God doing things in the wrong order (Day and night on day 1, plants on day 3, sun and moon on day 4, water life and birds on day 5) you might have a minor point. But evolutionary theory says sun, earth (and moon and planets), ocean life, land-based life, flying things, in that order. The fossil record and astronomy agree.

 

But let's not argue the merits of guided evolution in this thread. This one's for pure creationism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gen 1:20 ¶ And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good

 

How is this Scripture inconsistent with evolutionary theory?

That's the view of Theistic Evolution, which isn't of a big concern for me. If you believe God guided evolution, I will not argue with you.

 

The topic is rather the Christians who believe in the instantaneous creation, where God *poofed* the world and life into existence in 6 days.

 

The Christians and Jews who believe Evolution did happen, but with a nudge from God here and there, they at least acknowledge science to a larger extent. So in that particular case, you and I have no issue.

 

(I even have promoted that exact same idea to some Christians, as an alternative to the 6-day creation.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

From Duane Gish (PhD) of the ICR in a 1989 LA newspaper: We see all the heavy elements in the universe but since the big bang created only hydrogen, where did they come from?

 

 

 

Two creationists go to the beach and find a pier.

 

First creationist: Alright pier, if you have any objections to this theory, let us know. God made the world in six days.

 

A few minutes pass.

 

Second creationist: The pier hasn't said anything against our theory which means that it has been proven to be true. This pier-reviewing stuff is easy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pier-review :lmao::3:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hans, the rules for what may be posted in this thread are somewhat strict, so I wasn't sure if these videos fit in this thread though I think they do. But now I see you are joking around about pier-review so maybe it's okay. :)

 

It's two videos by the atheist astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson on why Intelligent Design should be taught along with real science.

 

Part 1: Neil Tyson - Gods retreat from cosmology.

 

Credit for finding them goes to atheist olidp on Reasonable Faith.org.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hans, the rules for what may be posted in this thread are somewhat strict, so I wasn't sure if these videos fit in this thread though I think they do. But now I see you are joking around about pier-review so maybe it's okay. :)

 

It's two videos by the atheist astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson on why Intelligent Design should be taught along with real science.

 

Part 1: Neil Tyson - Gods retreat from cosmology.

 

Credit for finding them goes to atheist olidp on Reasonable Faith.org.

 

 

Those videos where fun, thanks for posting them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Only one response from a christian, and all he offered was quotes from the bible.

 

Shocking....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's two videos by the atheist astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson on why Intelligent Design should be taught along with real science.

 

Part 1: Neil Tyson - Gods retreat from cosmology.

 

Credit for finding them goes to atheist olidp on Reasonable Faith.org.

 

Isn't that guy really Sinbad? :grin:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a Christian, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the topic at hand, “Give Us Scientific Proof for Creationism.” The question is a bit stacked in that by “scientific proof” I’m assuming you mean proof that is empirically verifiable, observable and repeatable. I can’t offer that. Christianity is not science. “Religion” can be seen as a way of thinking about ultimate or metaphysical questions such as how and why we are here, is there a purpose in life, what is the Creator’s purpose in creating life, etc. This obviously lies outside the purview of “science.” So I’m not sure what kind of “scientific proof” I need in order to make a case for theism. I will say this, scientists, such as Neil Tyson, deal with metaphysical questions in their underlying philosophical assumptions. Once you reject theism, a priori, then everything has a natural cause.

 

R.S. Martin, thanks for posting the videos. Neil Tyson is a well respected, well credentialed astrophysicist who has been touted as “the next Carl Sagan” (this was posted on his biographical page at the Rational Atheist website). I enjoyed listening to these two YouTube clips, he lectures with a passion that is very engaging. However, some of what he says is just bad philosophy. When you think about reality as a pie, and different aspects of reality as the slices of that pie (such as mathematics, biology, psychology, history, music, art, etc.), the mistake is committed when you take the methods and tools that are fitting for understanding that one slice of the “pie” and illicitly applying it to another piece of the pie. The aesthetic beauty and experience of a sunset is other than its mathematical properties or adherence to the laws of physics. Tyson is making a philosophical assumption that all of reality is simply physical, and because any transcendental reality lies outside the realm of what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell, it doesn’t exist. That the tools of science are the only tools necessary to understand reality is itself a philosophical position and not a scientific one.

 

Why is the brilliant Isaac Newton “at the limits of his knowledge” just because he believes that God is the source of the physical laws that operate in the universe? Could it be the case that “the most brilliant man who ever lived (Tyson’s description) has a different set of philosophical presuppositions that views a theistic universe as a reasonable alternative to Tyson’s rejection of it?

The bible is not a scientific book, but it is at least consistent with contemporary cosmology which theorizes that the universe came into existence at a finite moment in the past. I think Michael Martin argued for an eternal universe in his book The Case Against Christianity. I read it some years ago, so I stand corrected if I’m mistaken. The universe either had a beginning or it didn’t have a beginning. If it had a beginning, then this beginning was either caused or uncaused (nothing comes from nothing). If the beginning of the universe was caused, the cause was either personal or not personal. Ontologically, a cause is prior to its effect, so I don’t see how you can argue that the universe caused itself. It seems more plausible to me that the cause for the existence of the universe rests outside the universe itself. That seems to be more consistent with “In the beginning, God created” than to say the universe popped into existence uncaused, out of nothing.

 

I also think Tyson mischaracterizes intelligent design. When he quotes Ptolemy as saying, “I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to a fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of Ambrosia,” and then adds “This is intelligent design, the quote that I just read to you is Ptolemy invoking intelligent design,” is simply wrong headed. Intelligent design advocates begin by raising the question might there be natural systems that cannot be explained entirely in terms of natural causes and further, might there be natural systems that exhibit features characteristic of intelligence? They argue that there are distinctions between natural causes and intelligent causes and as such, intelligent causation is something that is empirically detectable.

 

Although many design proponents are theists (many are not, i.e. David Berlinski is a skeptic), intelligent causation is inferred and the identity of the intelligence is left for the theologian or philosopher, not for the design advocate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a Christian, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the topic at hand, “Give Us Scientific Proof for Creationism.” The question is a bit stacked in that by “scientific proof” I’m assuming you mean proof that is empirically verifiable, observable and repeatable. I can’t offer that. Christianity is not science.

 

So you have no scientific proof for creationism. No repeatable observations, not a scrap of fossil evidence in your favor.

 

The aesthetic beauty and experience of a sunset is other than its mathematical properties or adherence to the laws of physics.

 

Agreed, but that is not the question here.

 

Tyson is making a philosophical assumption that all of reality is simply physical, and because any transcendental reality lies outside the realm of what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell, it doesn’t exist. That the tools of science are the only tools necessary to understand reality is itself a philosophical position and not a scientific one.

 

Agreed that scientists can have assumptions but they deal with what is observable and measurable, not "transcendental reality". I can agree that there are aspects of the universe that science has not been able to deal with yet, but again, we are talking about evolution.

 

 

The universe either had a beginning or it didn’t have a beginning. If it had a beginning, then this beginning was either caused or uncaused (nothing comes from nothing). If the beginning of the universe was caused, the cause was either personal or not personal. Ontologically, a cause is prior to its effect, so I don’t see how you can argue that the universe caused itself. It seems more plausible to me that the cause for the existence of the universe rests outside the universe itself. That seems to be more consistent with “In the beginning, God created” than to say the universe popped into existence uncaused, out of nothing.

 

How the universe began is a different question from evolution. Evolution is an undisputed fact. So the universe is caused but God is uncaused? Why?

 

Intelligent design advocates begin by raising the question might there be natural systems that cannot be explained entirely in terms of natural causes and further, might there be natural systems that exhibit features characteristic of intelligence? They argue that there are distinctions between natural causes and intelligent causes and as such, intelligent causation is something that is empirically detectable.

 

Please give us some examples.

 

Since you say the Bible is not a science text, would you be in favor of including or excluding it from public school science classes?

 

Thank you for your respectful tone Desi. Its more than we get from a lot of Christians.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Super Moderator

As a Christian, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the topic at hand, “Give Us Scientific Proof for Creationism.” The question is a bit stacked in that by “scientific proof” I’m assuming you mean proof that is empirically verifiable, observable and repeatable.

 

Oh, requiring scientific proof for the *cough*scientific theory of creationism*cough* makes a question stacked, huh? :scratch:

 

I can’t offer that.

 

Of course you can't.

 

...So I’m not sure what kind of “scientific proof” I need in order to make a case for theism.

 

Actually, the question is "Give Us Scientific Proof For Creationism" not theism.

 

Thanks for your reply (you are much nicer than most xtians who visit us), but

.

.

.

.

Still waiting........

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a Christian, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the topic at hand, “Give Us Scientific Proof for Creationism.” The question is a bit stacked in that by “scientific proof” I’m assuming you mean proof that is empirically verifiable, observable and repeatable. I can’t offer that. Christianity is not science. “Religion” can be seen as a way of thinking about ultimate or metaphysical questions such as how and why we are here, is there a purpose in life, what is the Creator’s purpose in creating life, etc. This obviously lies outside the purview of “science.” So I’m not sure what kind of “scientific proof” I need in order to make a case for theism. I will say this, scientists, such as Neil Tyson, deal with metaphysical questions in their underlying philosophical assumptions. Once you reject theism, a priori, then everything has a natural cause.

I'm glad that you admit this. Creationism doesn't have any evidence. There is nothing to prove that God created the world.

 

But remember this, "Creationism" is not necessarily the same as "Christianity". You're jumping from Creationism to Christianity, like they are the same thing, but are they really? Muslims, Jews, and even Hindus, believe in God or Gods creating the world directly. And even some Christians do not believe in Creationism, but rather they believe in guided evolution. So in all fairness, to believe in Christianity isn't the same as proving Creationism.

 

Your answer is then basically, the evidence that animals are created from nothing and in an instant, is that we have to ponder the metaphysical questions about meaning of life and purpose. To which my response is: huh? There's no connection there for me. Can you please explain why questions about "why the apple pie tastes good" is somehow the evidence for an instant creation.

 

And we could reverse your last comment there: if you reject nature, a priori, then everything is explained with imagination (religion).

 

So really... did you really answer anything? I'm not sure you did.

 

R.S. Martin, thanks for posting the videos. Neil Tyson is a well respected, well credentialed astrophysicist who has been touted as “the next Carl Sagan” (this was posted on his biographical page at the Rational Atheist website). I enjoyed listening to these two YouTube clips, he lectures with a passion that is very engaging. However, some of what he says is just bad philosophy. When you think about reality as a pie, and different aspects of reality as the slices of that pie (such as mathematics, biology, psychology, history, music, art, etc.), the mistake is committed when you take the methods and tools that are fitting for understanding that one slice of the “pie” and illicitly applying it to another piece of the pie. The aesthetic beauty and experience of a sunset is other than its mathematical properties or adherence to the laws of physics. Tyson is making a philosophical assumption that all of reality is simply physical, and because any transcendental reality lies outside the realm of what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell, it doesn’t exist. That the tools of science are the only tools necessary to understand reality is itself a philosophical position and not a scientific one.

But we're talking about Creationism here.

 

Think about this:

Evolution has an explanation for why life look the way it does on this planet. Creationism has an explanation for it too. Evolution has a lot of evidence and arguments which makes sense. Creationism only has the metaphysical aspects about why pie tastes good. I think it makes more sense to trust the explanation which actually has evidence than the one which deals with fantasy.

 

Why is the brilliant Isaac Newton “at the limits of his knowledge” just because he believes that God is the source of the physical laws that operate in the universe? Could it be the case that “the most brilliant man who ever lived (Tyson’s description) has a different set of philosophical presuppositions that views a theistic universe as a reasonable alternative to Tyson’s rejection of it?

Your answer then is: if you have a Christian or Jewish scientist who believes God used evolution to create life on this planet, they are wrong because Newton had a different set of philosophical presuppositions. I still don't understand why that proves anything.

 

The bible is not a scientific book, but it is at least consistent with contemporary cosmology which theorizes that the universe came into existence at a finite moment in the past. I think Michael Martin argued for an eternal universe in his book The Case Against Christianity. I read it some years ago, so I stand corrected if I’m mistaken. The universe either had a beginning or it didn’t have a beginning. If it had a beginning, then this beginning was either caused or uncaused (nothing comes from nothing). If the beginning of the universe was caused, the cause was either personal or not personal. Ontologically, a cause is prior to its effect, so I don’t see how you can argue that the universe caused itself. It seems more plausible to me that the cause for the existence of the universe rests outside the universe itself. That seems to be more consistent with “In the beginning, God created” than to say the universe popped into existence uncaused, out of nothing.

Well, I can agree with that, except that the "cause outside the universe itself" necessarily must be a God of some kind, or even a creature with a will or thought. I believe it's just as plausible that this "First Cause" was a natural cause. Just because we can't look over the horizon of time doesn't mean that there is an elephant standing on a turtle on the other side. In other words, a "First Cause" isn't a problem, while "First Cause which is God" is.

 

I also think Tyson mischaracterizes intelligent design. When he quotes Ptolemy as saying, “I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to a fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of Ambrosia,” and then adds “This is intelligent design, the quote that I just read to you is Ptolemy invoking intelligent design,” is simply wrong headed. Intelligent design advocates begin by raising the question might there be natural systems that cannot be explained entirely in terms of natural causes and further, might there be natural systems that exhibit features characteristic of intelligence? They argue that there are distinctions between natural causes and intelligent causes and as such, intelligent causation is something that is empirically detectable.

Right. Lets see if I can sort this out, the way I see it is that ID is correct in making a condition that, if there is a divine source or creator, we should be able to find evidence for it in nature, and that this evidence could be, for instance, irreducible complex systems. However, every irreducible complex evidence they have found, has been debunked, so there is no evidence yet that holds to their condition.

 

Although many design proponents are theists (many are not, i.e. David Berlinski is a skeptic), intelligent causation is inferred and the identity of the intelligence is left for the theologian or philosopher, not for the design advocate.

It's still a matter of belief since no one can provide evidence for intelligent design. And that is what this thread is about: give us the evidence for intelligent design (in the aspect of poofing animals into existence from nothing). But so far, what I hear from you (reading the beginning), is that there is none and you admit to it.

 

But thanks for sharing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, here's some I used to use when I was preaching literal creationism...

 

I don't have the book in front of me, but I still own it. I think it's simply entitled Creation Science. Henry M Morris is one of the authors I believe. Anyway, in it, it talks about radioactive halos found in some mineral rocks which were proof that the rock was formed and cooled instantaniously. As far as actual evidence for creation, I don't remember much else.

 

But the book also talkes about proof for a young earth, in efforts to dismiss evolution and promote creation. Things like man and dinosaurs having lived together (which by the way, I'm still trying to sort out). And then there were other factors, such as a look at uniformitarianism and the flaw it presented if we used current known processes and extrapolated backward. Things such as the receeding tide, the slowing of the earth's orbit, the earth's magnetic field, the small amount of lunar dust, the shrinking sun, and today's human population being too low for humans to have been on earth for the last two million years. The stuff is reasonable, or so I thought. Of course, I still don't know what evolution has to say about all those things. I don't know enough about it. But if I were to argue anything, it would be those things listed. Just go to Christianity.com to the Science and Origins forum and gather a whole bunch of creationists from there...we'll have this thread hopping in no time! Might even raise the blood pressure in some of those guys!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, here's some I used to use when I was preaching literal creationism...

 

I don't have the book in front of me, but I still own it. I think it's simply entitled Creation Science. Henry M Morris is one of the authors I believe. Anyway, in it, it talks about radioactive halos found in some mineral rocks which were proof that the rock was formed and cooled instantaniously. As far as actual evidence for creation, I don't remember much else.

Now we're talking. This is the kind of things they should bring to the table.

 

I think I read somewhere about how those radioactive halos have natural causes, but it's a very vague memory... (I just woke up too, so my head isn't really there yet... if ever.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a Christian, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the topic at hand, “Give Us Scientific Proof for Creationism.” The question is a bit stacked in that by “scientific proof” I’m assuming you mean proof that is empirically verifiable, observable and repeatable. I can’t offer that. Christianity is not science. “Religion” can be seen as a way of thinking about ultimate or metaphysical questions such as how and why we are here, is there a purpose in life, what is the Creator’s purpose in creating life, etc. This obviously lies outside the purview of “science.”

 

Desi - first of all, thanks for posting. You are intelligent and articulate, which is (unfortunately) rare among Christians. I appreciate you taking the time to respond as you did.

 

The reason that the question seems stacked against Creationism is because the evidence is stacked against Creationism. Evolution can offer fossils, a sturdy predictive model, DNA, and a host of other empirical data and observations which re-enforce the likelihood that the theory is accurate. Creationism can offer only the Bible, and some vague presuppositions about the nature of reality.

 

Creationism has no predictive model. It cannot tell us what we should expect to find as we continue to examine biological constructs. All it can do is criticize Evolutionary theory whenever the data fails to line up immediately or exactly with the predictive model. But that's not science. A real scientific theory would make testable predictions, test those predictions, and then the theory would be refined according to the resulting data. Since Creationism has no predictive model, it cannot be tested in any way. It can only complain that the predictive model offered by evolutionary theory is imperfect.

 

Oddly enough, a true Theory of Creationism would itself be imperfect, because that's the nature of scientific theory. That's why theories predict, test, refine, and predict again.

 

I have no problem with Creationists saying that God is outside the purview of Science. Science studies the physical, not the metaphysical. The problem arises when Creationists try to claim that they are offering an alternative scientific theory, and demand that their views be taught as science. This is absurd. God is outside the purview of science, but science must include a "theory of God"?

 

If there is a creator, then evolution is its tool, and the Big Bang was the last time the creator did anything on the physical plane.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So you have no scientific proof for creationism. No repeatable observations, not a scrap of fossil evidence in your favor.

 

Hello DevaLight, I appreciate your comments and critique of my position. No, I do not have “scientific proof” for “creationism.” Just to be clear, I do not believe the universe and all that exists was created in a literal six days, around 6,000 years ago. I do believe that the universe is billions of years old and the creation of all living things occurred over a period of time.

 

I’m not sure what fossil evidence you’re referring to as evidence of a “creation” event. The formation of the universe in terms of the big bang cosmological model is a singularity. A singularity by definition is a onetime event.

 

I think we’re all in the same boat with respect to that issue. As someone who posits evolution, you must believe that at some point there was a transition to the organic world from the inorganic world. Is there fossil evidence for that? What kind of proof can anyone offer for origins? The topic at hand is scientific proof for creationism, I'd like to hear scientific proof for living things arising out of inorganic non-living material? What empirical, repeatable, observable, evidence is there for that? If you can offer some, I’d be willing to hear it.

 

How the universe began is a different question from evolution. Evolution is an undisputed fact. So the universe is caused but God is uncaused? Why?

 

You are right in saying that how the universe began is a different question from evolution, so I’m probably missing the point here. I do understand that Darwin wrote about the origin of the species and not the origin of the universe, but this thread has to do with scientific proof for creationism. Does that mean that because evolution doesn’t address the question of origins, you don’t have the burden of providing your own “scientific proof” for the origin (not creation) of all things?

 

I only argue that the universe is caused because everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. God did not begin to exist. The universe came into existence a finite time ago. Every effect has a cause, every contingent being is caused by another, everything that comes to be is caused by another, non-being cannot cause being. God is a Necessary Being, a Being that cannot, not exist. God is non temporal, non spatial, and non corporeal. A philosophical argument would be: Everything that comes to be is caused by another. The universe came to be.

Therefore, the universe was caused by another. But since you’re not looking for a philosophical argument, but a scientific one, I may be barking up the wrong tree.

 

I do think that intelligent design has validity. Creation is a doctrine about the source of all things- where is everything coming from? ID is about looking for patterns of design in organisms which point to intelligence. The SETI program, which is trying to find signs of intelligence in the universe, uses a sort of design detection in their search. What persuaded the scientists in the movie “Contact” that they found extraterrestrial life?

 

The detection of a highly improbable or complex specified event like the pattern of prime numbers which would have convinced them that they found intelligent life. In other words, they looked at design. The idea that there would be an intelligence behind the message was the basis for confirming that they found alien life. Looking at Mt. Rushmore and the Grand Canyon, you could tell what is natural and what is designed by looking at specified complexity. The inner life of the cell reveals irreducibly complex systems. If you remove one, two, three, or four parts, the system is unrecoverable. It will not recover the original function. How are these complex systems explained by natural selection and random variation?

 

Since you say the Bible is not a science text, would you be in favor of including or excluding it from public school science classes?

 

I am not one who favors a Bible in the public school classroom, unless the class is literature and the Bible is being discussed as ancient literature, as I would any other sacred text. I don’t think it has a place in the science class. I really do appreciate your comments. Thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

But remember this, "Creationism" is not necessarily the same as "Christianity". You're jumping from Creationism to Christianity, like they are the same thing, but are they really? Muslims, Jews, and even Hindus, believe in God or Gods creating the world directly. And even some Christians do not believe in Creationism, but rather they believe in guided evolution. So in all fairness, to believe in Christianity isn't the same as proving Creationism.

 

Han, I may be mistaken, but my understanding is you wrote the topic of this discussion “addressed to Christians who do not believe in Evolution, but believe in an alternative explanation, like Creationism.” And then you went on to ask “What evidence is there for Creationism?” So I don’t understand why you say that I’m “jumping from Creationism to Christianity like they are the same thing.”

 

You’re right and I agree with you, creationism and Christianity is not the same thing, but you’re asking the question to Christians, so that’s the context that I’m responding to the question. It is out of a biblical worldview as I understand it. Muslims, Jews and Hindus believe in a creation event, but the question wasn’t posed to Muslims, Jews, or Hindus. I understand that there are Christians who are theistic evolutionists, but it seems that if you’re talking about evolution in the Darwinian sense, that seems to be a logical inconsistency. Isn’t evolution supposed to be a purely natural, undirected, unguided, process? How does a deity guide and unguided process?

 

I agree with evolution to the extent that there are changes within species, but unless you can show me scientific evidence that shows for example, that cats give birth to dogs, and dogs give birth to birds, over long periods of time, I don’t accept evolution in that sense.

 

 

Well, I can agree with that, except that the "cause outside the universe itself" necessarily must be a God of some kind, or even a creature with a will or thought. I believe it's just as plausible that this "First Cause" was a natural cause. Just because we can't look over the horizon of time doesn't mean that there is an elephant standing on a turtle on the other side. In other words, a "First Cause" isn't a problem, while "First Cause which is God" is.

 

 

As I argued above, I just don’t see how there can be a natural cause as a first cause. Han, you would have to show scientific proof to me how nothing can come from something. How can matter “create” itself? How can a cause not be ontologically prior to its effect? If the universe came to be, as did time and space, there can be no time before time. That’s a logical impossibility

 

 

Right. Lets see if I can sort this out, the way I see it is that ID is correct in making a condition that, if there is a divine source or creator, we should be able to find evidence for it in nature, and that this evidence could be, for instance, irreducible complex systems. However, every irreducible complex evidence they have found, has been debunked, so there is no evidence yet that holds to their condition.

 

 

Please provide an example of an irreducibly complex system that has been debunked.

 

Again, I do admit that I don’t have any “proof” in the scientific sense for creation. I believe it was an event that happened one time in the past, and the past is not observable or repeatable. But please allow me to make an analogy here and I apologize if it falls short.

 

I was a homicide investigator. When I walked into a crime scene, I didn’t have the luxury of going back in time to empirically observe a homicide. Before me was the empirical fact of a dead body. Did this person have a heart attack? Did this person fall accidently and hit his head on the tub causing his death? Does this person have a slit across his throat? A bullet in his brain? Is there blood spatter across the ceiling and on the walls?

 

All of these things that I can observe now will allow me to make some deductions about what took place in the past. Samurai sword through the chest? I know it’s not a natural death. 95 year old man with a bad heart, weak lungs, declining health in recent years, lots of meds on the table, dead in his bed with a smile on his face? Well, yeah, maybe there’s a good chance its natural causes. I just think there are things we can examine and infer that there is an intelligent cause behind them.

 

I’m not posting to “win” arguments or puff my chest out, I just appreciate you hearing me out and the opportunity to dialogue.

 

A note to Buffetphan: I’m not trying to avoid your critique. Thank you for it. I just didn’t want to be redundant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.