The lie of evolution, part II

Right, and why not just assume that the New Testament is non-literal, too. Then we reach the conclusion of the typical evolutionist...why bother with God. I don't think God's Word was written for us to pick and choose what parts we wish to believe.

 

UTEOTW asked just on the last page for a young earth creationist explanation for some of the data. Go ahead, shoot! I would be interested in a sensible young earth explanation of the fossil record, for one.

Why would we do that?

 

Alas, the truth is evolution and long-ager's interpretations of data are the most natural way of interpreting the data we have.

Its pretty basic stuff. Multiple dating methods find themselves in agreement. Multiple alternative tests for the pattern of common descent find themselves in agreement. Multiple astronomical observations concur in showing an older universe.

When it comes to the evidence side of things, the YEC multiple descent theory simply fails. Mostly the failures come from using words to string together an argument without heed to the underlying scientific meaning behind the words. Science is not based on verbal proficiency, but on underlying reality.

 

FACT:

No one can deny the FACT that the vast majority of scientist working today believe from the scientific evidence that has been found to date that the “science” of creationism is nothing but screwball nonsense. Christians who publicly associate themselves with such screwball nonsense make Christians look like fools and make the Bible appear to be work of fiction. If you want to believe the screwball nonsense, that is your right, but PLEASE keep that belief to yourself. Can you even begin to imagine the damage that such a profession is doing to the gospel of Christ? Can you even begin to imagine how many people are in hell today because that profession caused them to totally ignore the possibility that there is any truth at all in the Bible?

 

Well, it would be good to clarify exactly what the "fact" is. The fact is that a majority of scientists believe something. Their belief does not make it correct. You cannot argue that their belief establishes something as fact. It merely establishes it as their belief. Don't make a bad argument, Craig.

You assume it is screwball nonsense. That is your belief. Quite frankly, it is a nonsensical belief that you hold, but you certainly may hold it.

This might possibly be the worst argument I have ever seen here. How in the world can you argue that someone is in hell because of this? Do you not believe in the gospel of Christ? Do you not believe in the power of God to save?

It is absurd for a second reason: Those who assert the truth of the Bible can hardly be held responsible for denying the truth of the Bible. When you read Genesis 1, you get a picture of a world that was created in six days. And then you say that people who believe that are making the Bible appear to be a work of fiction. I don't think you even thought through that Craig. That type of thinking is way below your level. How does affirming the truth of Gen 1 make it appear to be fiction? That is absurd and I think you know it.

When one comes along and say that Genesis 1 isn't true since science has "found" a billions of years old universe, they are the ones making the Bible appear to be fiction. If the Genesis account of creation isn't true, then there is no salvation. It is a compromise of hte gospel of Christ.

 

OK Just for fun lets invert this post based the facts that just as we deal with not the Bible but our interpretations of the Bible by necessity and we deal with nature not with nature but our current scientific view of nature:

Those who hold to the facts of natural reality can hardly be blamed for not denying the facts of natural reality. When you review the facts of geology and astronomy you get the picture of a world that was created over billions of years. And then you say that people who believe that are making the natural world a source of conjecture and make believe! Pastor Larry, that type of thinking is way below your level. How does affirming the truth of God's very creation make for "conjecture" and "supposition?" That is absurd and you should be able to see that.

When one comes along and says the findings of science are false because the Bible has "literally described" a young 6000 year old world, they are the ones making the works of the Creator to appear to be deception. If the natural evidence for how creation occurred isn't true, then there is no trustworthiness in the Creator. It is a comprimise in the theological viewpoint of the rock of our salvation.

how did I do? Did I accurately reflect, from an opposing point of view, the post of my esteemed disputant?

And now that we all know we can sloganeer back an forth to no avail, can we get back to discussing the evidence?

 

"I prefer to call this version the argument from incredulity or the argument from unimaginativeness!"

You're probably right.

Many of the things are better described as incredulity while others are better described by a lack of information.

"UTEOTW asked just on the last page for a young earth creationist explanation for some of the data. Go ahead, shoot! I would be interested in a sensible young earth explanation of the fossil record, for one. "

I would be interested in one too. Alas they do not exist.

But thank you for noticing that there was a request implied in my second post on the last page. I do not expect any one to actually stubstantially address it.

In that post I listed a number of homologies that suggest that birds evolved from dinosaurs. I essentially ignored most of the transitional fossils along the way, too. The kicker is the genetic evidence at the end that shows that birds and crocodiles are more closely related to one another than to any other life on this planet.

There were four different genetic studies cited, each looking at different aspects. Based on the other data, I EXPECTED this to be the case. I did not even know that there was a genetic connection before I looked it up the last time the subject came up. But because of the other evidence, I was confident that such a connection would have been found to exist if I were to do a little digging.

And wouldn't you know, the search bore fruit.

Now I'd really like an answer from a YEer on why SPECIFICALLY they would expect a crocodile to be more closely related to a bird than to say a lizard or a snake.

I know why. It is because crocs and birds share a more recent common ancestor that crocs and snakes. There are many lines of evidence to support it and the genetics confirms it. But why is this so from a YE perspective?

We went through this previously with the whales. A number of pieces of evidence were presented showing that whales evolved from the Cetartiodactyla group. Genetic evidence then shows that whales are most closely related to modern members of Cetartiodactyla. No substantial theory was ever offered to tell us why we should expect that a whale would be more closely related to a hippo or a camel than to anything else in particular alive.

I can easily make a case for why. YE has no answer.

It has no answers at all.

 

Pastor Larry wrote,

Those who assert an obviously wrong interpretation of the Bible most certainly are responsible for the consequences of asserting an obviously wrong interpretation. Christian fundamentalists who publicly assert that Genesis 6-11 is an historical account of actual events are asserting a falsehood that could not possibly be more obvious to anyone who dares to use the intelligence that God has given to him, and the consequence of this assertion is that they make the Bible appear to be at best a work of fiction, causing vast multitudes to reject it as such and spend eternity in the fires of hell.

Read for yourself the grossly absurd and self-contradictory arguments that creationists have put forward to defend their ridiculous notion of a worldwide flood with a boat full of animals floating around for 150 days. And then visit a large zoo for a day and ponder the immense amount of man power that is required seven days a week to maintain a collection of several hundred animals. And then consider the absolute impossibility of the scenario depicted in Genesis where you have a bare minimum of hundreds of thousand of animals, very many of which are carnivores, and very many herbivores which have very strict dietary requirements, including fresh fruits that grow only on mature trees. And then consider all of the marine life that has very strict water chemistry requirements that would be fatally altered during a world-wide flood. And then consider the animals disembarking from the Ark in a barren wasteland totally destroyed by the flood. Even little school boys and girls are aware of what happens to species of animals when there habitats are severely damaged. And in the story of Noah’s Ark we are not just talking about severe damage, we are talking about total destruction of the habitats with no hope of restoration and no hope of survival of the animals. It just didn’t happen—and the absolute proof of it is the huge number of animals that have continued to survive down to this day, including all the marine animals in our oceans.

Am I denying the truth of the Bible? Absolutely not! I am denying your ridiculously absurd interpretation of Genesis 6 -11, an interpretation that has been proven to be false. And since we know for an established and incontrovertible fact that Genesis 6-11 is not an historical account of actual events, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that Genesis 1 -5 are an historical account of actual events but every reason from science to believe that they are not.

And please don’t try to suggest that those who deny the correctness of your interpretation of the Bible are a small fringe group of weirdoes when, in fact, that that is much more closely a description of those who hold to your interpretation.

 

This is always one of the most frustrating assertions that you will see YEers make. They seem to like to constantly make the claim that everyone has the same data and it is just a matter of different interpretations.

That's great and all, but look what happens when you try and get them to apply that to real data. They are happy to re-interpret strawmen from time to time. But how many pages did the last thread goshowing the various pieces of data that indicates that whales evolved from land dwelling ancestors and then asking YEers to re-interpret that data into an YE paradigm, especially the part where whales and shown to be most closely related to animals like camels and hippos SPECIFICALLY.

You see it happening now on this thread. A limited set of homologies were shown between dinosaurs and birds, suggesting that they are part of the same evolutionary lineage. Then it was shown that the genetic data agrees with these conclusions. How long do you think it will take for a YEer to propose a testible theory that explains why a crocodile SHOULD be shown to be most closely related to birds than to any living reptiles?

You can even do this with humans and the other apes and primates. Here is one example.

"Genomic divergences between humans and other hominoids and the effective population size of the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees," Chen FC, Li WH, American Journal Human Genetics, 2001 Feb;68(2):444-56.

For this paper, they used "53 autosomal intergenic nonrepetitive DNA segments from the human genome and sequenced them in a human, a chimpanzee, a gorilla, and an orangutan." These segments included "Y-linked noncoding regions, pseudogenes, autosomal intergenic regions, X-linked noncoding regions, synonymous sites, introns, and nonsynonymous sites."

When all the various sequences are considered as togther, they "supports the Homo-Pan clade with a 100% bootstrap value." This is pretty clear evidence of the shared common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees. What is the alternate explanation for why all of these various bits of junk DNA should fitthe expected pattern so well? And remember, this is only one study out of an almost limitless supply of other studies showing the consistency of the phylogenies of the apes from all sorts genetic and molecular means.

 

Not well at all ... Not well at all. This reminds me why I don't enter these discussions much. There is really much point in discussing evidence of the Bible or science.

You completely missed the point. You can hold to the "facts of natural reality" and believe that the Bible teaches young earth creationism. If you were to take the Bible at face value and look at the universe, everything you see is exactly what you would expect. Now, that is not foolproof because obviously the current state can be arrived at in different ways.

But it is bad argumentation to argue the "facts of natural reality" without admitting that you are not arguing facts but rather an interpretation of those facts. It is intellectually dishonest. Why do you think the scientific world is at such great odds, and is in a continual state of flux? Becuase they simply do not know. They are hypothesizing, and we need to be honest enough to point that out. BTW, much of creation science is also hypothesis. And we need to point that out as well.

But the bigger reason I responded was to point out the fallacious nature of Craig's attempted argument. He purported to discuss a fact and then changed to discuss a belief. The fact is that many scientists believe something. That doesn't make the fact equivalent to the content of their belief. Craig should have been able to see the argumentative fallacy there. We could turn it around this way: FACT: Many Bible believers believe in young earth creationism. That is a fact. It doesn't mean that YEC is a fact. And now, by changing it slightly, the problem with Craig's argument is seen clearly.

Then he jumps from the "fact" of their belief, to the asssertion that anything else is nonsensical. Again, that is just a bad method of argumentation. Should we jump from the fact that many believe YEC to the position that everything else is nonsensical? You won't find me making such a weak argument.

Then he jumps from that to asserting that YEC makes a joke of the Bible and suggesting that people are in hell because someone believed what God said. That is a weak argument, both in terms of simple rhetoric and logic, but also theologically.

Craig can do better. He knows it.

 

I agree. But you would first have to prove the "obviously wrong interpretation." You can't make that jump in logic. Or at least you shouldn't make it. Please tell me that your mind isn't so small as to be impressed by that kind of argument.

That is simply wrong. You have asserted your "intelligence" over the word of God. Read Eph 4:17-19 for God's view of your intelligence. It isn't flattering.

Please tell me this isn't your reason for rejecting, Craig. I am used to you using bad arguments, but this takes the cake. This is worse than your original assertion. This has been so clearly answered as to be beyond belief that you would repeat it. Why in the world would you think marine mammals need to be on teh ark in a flood? Did you even stop to think before you posted that? Craig, the world was covered with water. The marine mammals were right at home.

Secondly, the variation of the species is a post-flood phenomenon. While today we have hundreds of kinds of dogs, there are still the same "kind," and thus, there were only two dogs on the ark. The same with all the rest. Again, the fact that you are persuaded by such weak evidence is astounding.

So you are not denying it when the Bible says that all the earth, the highest mountains, were covered by water? You think that is true? You think it is true when the Bible says that there were two of every kind of animal on the ark?

Now you are sounding schizophrenic with your argument. You spent a whole paragraph saying it wasn't true, and now say it is. That makes no sense. The emperor has no clothes.

How did you incontrovertibly establish this fact? Sounds to me like you aren't thinking very well.

Those who hold my view are a small minority. "Wierdoes" (woulnd't it be "wierdos") is too strong of a word for honest people to use, though there are some who don't make their case very well. Your side certainly has the most adherents, but so does the side that denies the deity of Christ and the existence of miracles. So, I am not terribly concerned by the numbers. I am concerned with the Scriptures and the integrity of them. And so I will defend that.

But as a whole Craig, your argumentative method is weak. It is chock full of holes. YOu have confused assertion with argument; you have confused your proposition with proof. That doesn't work when you have an audience of thinkers who are somewhat engaged in the conversation.

 

"Craig, majority does not determine truth. That's number one."

Yeah, but it is generally safer to be in line with the exceeding majority of experts from the field than to go against them.

"Second, there is a two mile thick carbon-rich deposit below the Cambrian which is all over the world. This is the Flood deposit. That is not an obviously nonsensical proposition."

And this assertion has been debated in the past a couple of times and never brought to a resolution.

Here is the last time, though you will have to skip around a bit because it was imbedded into a discussion on another topic. But the whole thread is only about 17 - 18 posts long, so don't worry too much. The rest of the thread is an interesting discussion of why we don't see humans and dinosaurs together. Ever. It was basically left with it being shown that this asserted Flood deposit is only one layer of others like it and that it matches the characteristics of these other layers including a C13 / C12 ratio excursion through the layer indicating a non-organic origin. Here is the first post dealing with the subject.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/95.html#000010

There was also a whole thread on this topic.

http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/66/18.html?

This is another case where there is a large range of observations that are wanting for an alternate YE explanation.

"It is also interesting, in case you are not aware of it, that the earth is the ONLY planet with a non-captured moon which is NOT orbiting on the equitorial plane."

Just how in the world was there time for moon formation and capture in a young universe paradigm? These things were not just created in place?

Anyhow. Think of the other planets like earth, the terrestrials. Mercury, Venus, Mars. Let's see, two of these have no moons and the third, Mars, only has a couple of small captured asteroids. (Interstingly, Mars has craters on its surface which fit the pattern of other captured asteroids whose orbits decayed and they crashed into the surface. How does the orbit of these moons decay so fast if Mars is only a few thousand years old? What is the mechanism?)

So what do you notice? None of them have moons like the Earth's. Which planets do? Ah, the gas giants. Now how did these non-captured moons of the gas giants form? From the same clump of material that formed the planets themselves. Which raises another question. Since they formed from the same disk of material, astronomers know why they should be in the same plane. If they were created in place, why place them in the same plane and the other moons in varying planes?

Now how did the earth's moon form? An object the size of Mars collided with the earth. Here is a discussion about a paper from a few years ago that explains the inclination of the moon's orbit. It was larger in the past.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/moon_tilt_000216.html

"The earth's axis has been tilted. Actually, this has occured two or three times, the last of which was a correction of the tilt to our lesser tilt of today which occurred in 2345 BC."

Funny that the literature on the subject shows how to measure the tilt much further back and says that it has not changed much.

Vanyo, S. & Awramik, S.M. 1985: Stromatolites and Earth-Sun-Moon dynamics. Precambrian Research 29, pp. 121-142.

There are other studies which can be used to trace the tilt of the earth's axis through time.

"And, by the way, as one last thing, just in case you haven't spent much time in Genesis 1-11, you will note that Noah did not have to take marine animals on the Ark. They actually managed to survive in water!"

How? The flood model that you advocate would result in all the waters of the earth being brought to the boiling point. Among other problems.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3147/2.html#000016

"Wegener was one man declaring plate tectonics and was laughed out of every meeting he was part of during his entire life. Now, of course, he is considered a hero and plate tectonics an established fact. That happened in the 20th century, not in the Middle Ages."

So even ideas which go against the mainstream will gain acceptance if the evidence is there. That is the lesson, right?

We now know why YE and ID fail to gain acceptance.

 

Well, you completely missed MY point . . which is that we can sloganeer each other all day long and so what? SLOGANS won't settle a thing.

It is intellectually dishonest to say we've got anything else. All we have is our interpretation of the facts and our interpretation of the Bible and we are absolutely stuck with making the best possible interpretation we can of each.

You have missed something. In addition to forming new hypotheses all the time, there are things that science establishes. After getting some things established, science builds on those to find new areas where things remain more hypothetical. Then science pins those areas down and procedes to even newer areas of hypotheticals.

Your problem is you are confusing what is established with what is hypothetical.

Craig is in touch with what has been firmly established and what remains hypothetical.

Craig is aware of the depth of evidence that disproves the YEC hypothesis. It has been disproved.

People really do report having crises of faith when they realize they have been misled by their religion about the age of the earth, or about the common descent of all life. Do you think it never happens that some, reaching this point, leave the faith of their fathers? Of course some do. And of course their are others who never even give your witness of the gospel a chance, believing as they do that since you are out of touch with reality in the sciences, why think you are in touch spiritually?

I'm not saying they are justified to think like that, I am merely saying one can understand how they can think like that.

The "foolishness of the cross" referred to by Paul of Tarsus is problem enough to share with people. We don't need to ADD to their problems.

 

You're dumping tons of fresh water into the oceans. The ocean salinity would be drastically lowered. Many marine animals require very specific water conditions. If there was a literal global flood I'd expect all fish not able to survive long periods in brackish to fresh water to die. Definitely all corals would die--buried under thousands of feet of water for up around a year! Following the Flood there would be an ice age due to the overlying fresh water stopping the ocean currents. . . Of course this is making the generous assumption that condensing that much water or releasing that much water by geothermal processes wouldn't poach all marine lifeforms and steam alive Noah and all of the animals.

I'm assuming that you accept some variation in the offspring of original created kinds. Most young earthers believe that the dogs originated from an ancestral kind that speciated into wolves, dogs, coyotes, and jackels. I've already addressed the arbitrariness of the kind cutoff line--it's placed wherever a certain young earth creationist subjectively feels too much change is about to occur. For instance, Helen places all of the above canids into one kind, but excludes foxes from that kind because they are incapable of interbreeding with these other canids. However, many fox species are incapable of interbreeding with each other, requiring God to make one doglike canid kind and a half-dozen foxes. Then we reach the frogs. . . The frogs produce a variety of antimicrobial peptides which are unique to each genus and sometimes to each species. Since young earthers keep adamently saying that no new genes can arise, they are forced to conclude that each of these groups with a unique set of peptides came from an original kind. This means there were scores if not hundreds of original frogs.

Why would God be so arbitrary in creating animals? It makes no sense!

However, if we study the evidence we find that new genes can arise through many means, the simplest of which is gene duplication and mutation of the duplicate gene to produce a new protein with a new function. Thus it makes sense that all frogs can have descended from some common ancestor.

Additionally, we find that chromosomes can undergo changes such as fusions or splitting to produce fewer or more chromosomes. These chromosomal changes can so modify the karyotype of an animal that it is reproductively isolated and split off from its original species and father new species. It seems that foxes have undergone several rounds of chromosomal changes in their evolution, but that foxes and the doglike canids came originally from the same common ancestor.

Now a young earther might accept these explanations, but then there is no logical reason to stop at that point. Why not go back further and accept that all carnivores came from a common ancestor? The only reason this is not done is not because of the evidence, but because of a presupposition.

Another good example of an evolutionary relationship rejected solely because of presupposition is the Volvocales colonial algae which I spoke of before. They show definite evidence of branching off from a colonial common ancestor, and any young earther believing in original kinds which then speciated would agree that they are part of the same kind. However, the direct ancestor of this colonial common ancestor was a Chlamydomonas species, which is a single-celled algae. The genetic evidence that establishes a link between the Volvocales also establishes a clear link between the Volvocales and Chlamydomonas. Of course, this establishes a conversion from a single-celled organism to a multi-cellular organism, so this evidence is discounted arbitrarily because it contradicts young earth creationists' prior assumptions.

Just requesting more information--Helen, would you say that all fossils are a result of the flood? Or is there some break point (following the Cambrian?) where those strata are supposed to be laid down after the Flood?

 

Let us clear the air.

This is a battle of paradigms. There is no common ground if the first plank in the paradigm is: The first book in God's written revelation is basically fable, fairy tales and myth. If that be true, what about the last book in the Bible? How about the Gospels? What about the testimony of Jesus? If there is no absolute Truth revealed from God, then everything is relative. We are also still in our sins.

Another problem is trying to debate evolution and divinity in science class. In as much as evolution requires as much, if not more, faith as does creation, both should be considered in "religion" class--something difficult to find in "public" schools. Thank you ACLU.

Origins is not a proper subject for science class--the theories cannot be proven or disproven. We can make artist's concepts of what a pig might look like using only one tooth as a model. We can mix some stuff and make some building blocks; but have yet to demonstrate a building being able to assemble itself. We can "what if" this all day long. Now what?

God said it, that settles it. Whether we believe Him or not is irrelevant. Truth is still truth--whether we believe or not.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

"In as much as evolution requires as much, if not more, faith as does creation, both should be considered in "religion" class--something difficult to find in "public" schools. Thank you ACLU."

Not true.

Faith is the belief in something for which there is no proof. Evolution has an abundance of evidence in its support. There is no faith required.

 

You just made a point that makes your theories fall apart.

In YOUR paradigm, EVERYTHING has to come from a natural occurance. There isn't time for a moon to form and be captured in a young universe. That is correct. The creation was not natural. Read Genesis for an eye-witness account and you will see that it was NOT natural.

You are attempting to cram the data you see today into a "naturalistic" theory. This is where the fault of those who follow your theory lies.

It is funny how you and the other evolutionists can accept supernatural occurances when Jesus was on Earth, but you cannot accept them during the creation.

You try to point out it would be difficult to fit the animals in the ark. But, you do NOT allow for the use of supernatural action on God's part.

You claim that we limit God, while you put Him into a box claiming that He cannot create anything unless He uses natural physical laws, that He created in the first place.

 

Its not just a matter of accepting that natural physical laws can be violated by miracles. There is the evidence against the world wide flood that God presumably would have had to put in place with a deliberate creative act. Why would He do that? For example, why would He create all those extra genetic variations so eloquently described above? Or why would he create 400,000 annual layers of ice in the Antarctic, following the flood somewhere about 3 to 6 thousand years ago that destroyed all the ice? Or why would He erase the world wide flood layer? Or why would He create trees with tree rings showing successive annual growth patterns right through the flood without interruption? Or why would He show rocks with radioactive decay results documenting an age of billions of years?

These are not mere absence of evidence. These are positive evidences against the YEC/ world wide flood interpretation.

So why not accept "all the earth" from Genesis as all the earth known to the survivers of the ark, and all the animals as all the animals known to the survivers of the ark? Perfectly consistent with the use of the Hebrew words, after all, and does away with the scientific difficulties.