Evidence for Creationism

It's been done too many times, Galatian. But, first of all, to correct your terminology:

creationism -- like all 'isms' is a belief system.

creation science, however, is the employment of data and the scientific methods (for there are more than one... ) to seek for the truth.

Is there evidence apart from a bashing of evolution etc.? Yes, and so many have been given that it is bizarre to pretend they haven't.

Bacteria stay bacteria, by type, no matter what happens.

Multicellular organisms show variation but no known, extant changes in form or function, no matter what happens.

What we see in nature is a consistent trend towards disorganization (in living things, this follows the initial increase which is programmed into the genetic structure and operates when conditions are favorable). This implies an original high state of organization.

That gives you a start...

 

Helen wrote:

And that, to the extent it is true, has nothing to do with the creation of those bacteria's ancestors or of anything else.

Same problem as above. Even if one accepted the premise, the conclusion does not follow. In order to give evidence for creation (not merely bashing evolution) you need to show something ABOUT the putative creation.

You might, for example, show evidence of the sudden, concurrent appearance of all or most life forms within the fossil record. Or you might show that beyond a certain age ( a few thousands of years) earth has no geological history, although some parts could still show ages greater than the length of that history.

Get the ideaWhen scientists study evolution, cosmology, geology, etc., they do not count as serious evidence any refutation of creationism. Science, including evolution, doesn't even talk about creationism to a significant extent. Evidence for evolution is evidence about evolution, not just simply something refuting creation. It is that sort of thing that we demand when we ask for evidence of creation.

(I know that you, Helen, think that either creation or evolution must be the case, so evidence against one is necessarily evidence for the other. However, such "indirect" evidence is not what is being asked for here.)

Nope. We see birth, growth, reproduction and death. We see the young plant taking in disorganized carbon dioxide, sunlight, and making food, growing, self-organizing, then reproducing others, and ultimately dying, its matter either taken in by other organisms as food or returning to a state similar to its previously disorganized carbon dioxide.

 

We can look out into space in star forming regions and see all stages of the collapse of molecular clouds into stars and possible planetary systems. I believe that stars, planets and other bodies would be considered to be more organized than a diffuse molecular cloud. To use a more specific term than disorganization, I think, though I have no idea how to calculate this, that the mass of the star would have lower entropy after being gathered together to form the star than that material had before collapse though the inefficiency of formation would lead to an increase in the entropy of the universe.

 

Responses to all:

To Galatian
As long as bacteria stay bacteria and the E.coli remains identifiably E.coli, etc., there appears to be some kind of barrier preventing major changes. Biological stasis within the bounds of normal genetic variation appears to be the rule, and this is in concordance with Genesis 1. The same is true of multicellular organisms. Kinds appear to be a fixed delineation, indicating creation ex nihilo. Interpretations foisted off onto the fossil finds are not considered evidence. The fossils themselves are data, but the interpretations of them are not.

Speciation of insects or anything else, on Hawaii or anywhere else, is not an issue. Variation occurs. Fits into new niches occur. This is only evidence of an original population which had a great deal of variability built into its genome.

To Mark Kluge: Inasmuch as the word ‘creation’ does indeed refer to origins, you are right. I did not deal with that in my first response. However I was trying to read between the lines of Pat’s post, as he specifically excludes origins from the creation/evolution controversy being a theistic evolutionist himself. Therefore I tried to deal with his area of the argument.

However, the fossil record does indeed show the sudden appearance of life forms, fully-formed, in the fossil record, which is the very reason Gould and Eldridge postulated the Punctuated Equilibrium theory.

As far as ‘evolution being evidence for evolution’, the problem is that, beyond variation and interpretations, there is none. Cladistics cannot be used to give evidence for evolution for the very formation of clades is based upon the presumption of evolution. Transitionals cannot be evidence for evolution, for their identification as ‘transitional’ is purely done on the basis of a belief that evolution actually happened. What an evolutionist sees, for instance, as a transitional can just as easily be seen as an entirely new kind of animal or an interesting variation by a creationist. And neither can prove the other wrong or themselves right!

I honestly have yet to see any evidence that evolution, as it is presented to the public, involving a single-celled ancestor for all of life as we see it on earth, is true. I see interpretations all over the place, but no real evidence. I do see in the complexity of cellular structure, however, clear evidence for an Intelligent Designer at the least, and the God of the Bible in truth.

You said that the consistent trend in nature towards disorganization is denied by what we see in the life cycle: birth, growth, reproduction, and death. However you did not complete my quote, did you? I qualified my statement and both you and UTEOTW ignored that. I wrote “in living things, this follows the initial increase which is programmed into the genetic structure and operates when conditions are favorable.”

I could quote all manner of physicists and linguists and biologists and chemists so many others to back up my statement about the TREND. First of all, I am not denying that there are times and areas of decrease in entropy. But the trend is toward increase. In all areas. Decrease only happens in remarkable circumstances and where the life cycle is concerned, only if the programming is correct in the organism and the environmental conditions are favorable. But you two know all this! Why are you tilting at windmills? We know that fighting increases in entropy is the main thrust of all living organisms as well as the goal of much of man’s work himself!

UTEOTW, we see AREAS we presume are star-forming regions, but although we have seen stars on the way out before our eyes, we have never seen a new one form. We have only presumed to have seen areas where they might be forming. Our evidence is indirect, or circumstantial. What we have seen are stars apparently ‘blinking on’ as dust in front of them is cleared away, and they become visible to us. This is not the same as actual star formation, however. Even with all that, however, even if we should see a star form, this does not negate the universal TREND towards increased disorganization, or increased entropy.

And this trend logically requires a beginning or point of origin which was highly organized. This is the same thing we see in genetics – a build up of mutations which causes disorganization within the genome and gradual breakdown. Occasional fitting into niches is far outweighed by the numbers of species which are now considered endangered. Things are falling apart.

That comes from an original point of having been put together, which we call creation.

 

This thread is not about evidence, or lack thereof, for evolution. It is about evidence for creation. For the sake of argument on this thread we may ignore the evidence for evolution, or even suppose that there is none.

The problem is, then, to find evidence in favor of creat, in particular young-earth creation.

While it is true that the fossil record contains evidence of "sudden" appearance of life forms, that "sudden" is with respect to geological times. Perhaps Helen means by her "evidence for creation" evidence that fully-functional life forms were created separately over several millions of yoars?

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For evidence that Science actually shows that Evolution is impossible, go here Christiananswers.net

 

First, sorry to here about your hand and I pray that your recovery will be swift.

Second, I understood your statement on trends towards disorganization to be a general statement with the following parenthetical to be a comment on life sciences specifically.

I must admit that I fail to find your point in saying that disorganization is increasing. I do not think that you will find any argument over the increase in the total entropy of the universe. But we both also know that entropy is not disorder but a thermodynamic property. I am unsure how you would measure or even define disorder.

I disagree with the premise that "Decrease only happens in remarkable circumstances and where the life cycle is concerned, only if the programming is correct in the organism and the environmental conditions are favorable." I do not find local decreases in entropy remarkable at all. In my inital example, I find nothing remarkable about gravity pulling together a cloud to make a star. I see nothing remarkable about water vapor condensing to form a liquid. I see nothing remarkable about a liqid freezing into solid. And I see nothing remarkable about life using thermodynamically favored processes to live.

I also disagree with the premise that "This is only evidence of an original population which had a great deal of variability built into its genome." The recent news story at http://msnbc.com/news/904802.asp?0dm=N26AT about the evolution of hummingbirds' beaks in the Caribbean shows changes in the beak structure of the birds. Now, if all these birds (OK, I suppose I should say all members of the Hummingbird "kind." Would that be the correct dividing point, at the family level?) were to be descended from a single pair then all of the genetic variability would have to be present in those two individuals. Where is the evidence for such genetically rich individuals and what process gets us from there to here where individual organisms do not that level of diversity? To a lay person such as myself, it seems unlikely that a process could selectively remove that much genetic diversity from individual genomes without damaging the entire genome to the point that the organism can no longer function.

 

There is a smooth continuum of stages of life and death of stars that can be observed. It is a little misleading to say that we have never observed a new star forming when the process takes so long that you cannot see a reasonable degree of change in course of a human lifetime. It would be hard to describe at what moment in the birth of a new star you would define as being the instant that a new star forms. I would add that as good a definition as any would be actually seeing a star emerge from the cocoon of dust which you seem to admit.

There are a number of lines of evidence to indicate star formation and ages of the stars. A summary of the process might start with a molecular cloud that begins to collapse and then to fragment. (Perhaps you have seen pictures of Bok globules.) As the collapse continues a protostar forms and begins to emit energy to the energy released by contraction. The fragment around the protostar forms an accretion disk which provides material to the growing star and to other bodies that may form. Eventually the contraction produces enough heat and pressure to kick off H fusion. As the collapse continues the heat and pressure from contraction increases the fusion rate until a balance is reached where the energy produced by fusion ofsets the force of gravity. You now have a zero age star producing all of its energy from fusion. In the meantime, the developing solar wind has started to sweep the dust and gas of the accretion disk that has been incorporated into bodies out of the young solar system.

Some changes that happen during this time.

The inital molecular cloud is in equilibrium and emits energy primarily as a blackbody curve. As the cloud collapses and begins to heat the spectrum starts to emit more and more energy in the IR spectrum. There are other changes as the cloud heats such as dissociation of H2 into H and ionization of molecules in the cloud. Looking at the structure of the cloud you should be able to get an idea of how far along in the collapse it is and the spectra confirms the observation.

The inital cloud contains a variety elements. There are a number of these that can be found in the early stages of a protostar, that are not found in mature stars, and that can be shown to be destroyed by nuclear processes either in the protostar or in normal stars. These include Li, Be, and B. Once the protostar reaches a given temperature, these start to be destroyed. Be and B are destroyed before the protstar ever reaches the main sequence. Li takes a bit longer to destroy and depends on the final mass of the star. Again, the progress of the formation can be determined by observation (items such as the state of the accretion disk and the temperature, diameter and luminosity of the protostar). These observations agree with the levels of Be, B, and Li that would be expected based on the nuclear processes that destroy each.

The environment is crucial in showing that these really are star forming regions. Molecular clouds are generally in equilibrium between gravity and gas pressure. It takes something to trigger collapse. This can be various things but includes pressure waves compressing the gas and allowing gravity to take over. Two ways to get the pressure are from the energy released by massive stars and by the shock from supernovas. Obsevations support this. Star forming regions can often be found inside expanding supernova shells. A good example of star formation from the effect of massive stars is the Orion nebula. The stars of the Trapezium exert pressure on the surrounding nebula through UV radiation. This serves both to compress parts of the nebula to drive star formation and to evaporate the collopsing material placing a time limit on the star forming process and reducing the size of the stars that can be formed. The pictures of the EGGs (evaporating gaseous globules) or proplyds in the very famous picture of M16 (the Eagle nebula) are a great example of this. The presence of the massive stars to drive the star formation associated with stars in many different states of formation and the effects that the massive stars have on the proplyds is great evidence of the Orion nebula being an active star forming region and not a static region.

There is also evidence after the fact. If you look at a globular cluster you will find that most if not all of the stars have the same age using different methods to estimate age and you will find that they also have enough similarity in compostion to show that they formed from a fairly uniform cloud of dust and gas. The similar ages and compositions are good evidence that they formed from one large cloud at the same time. This also leads to two pieces of evidence of the great age of globular clusters. Globular clusters are metal poor with metals being anything other than H or He. Active star forming regions and other stars believed to be younger have a lot higher proportion of metals. And if you plot all the stars of a globular cluster on an HR diagram, a large number will have evolved off the main branch onto the red giant stage. A young open cluster, in contrast, will ofter have all of its stars on the main branch.

An analogy. If you were to take a snapshot of the human population and were able to study the various stages of human development and reproduction from sperm and eggs cells to zygotes and embryos to the birthing process to infants to toddlers to children and adults to old people and all in between, I think you could get a good idea of how it all takes place without having to observe a person from conception to death. Same thing here. We have all of the stages and we have numerous independent ways of measuring the progress. Is there an alternate explanation that accounts for all the data? I haven't heard of one. We can look out an see that the universe is not a static place. Why should we not think that areas where all of the evidence points to star formation are not what they seem?

An apology for the length. I have a bit of trouble being succinct. Plus it is hard to lay out somewhat technical evidence without a little explanation.

 

I appreciate your point of view and, as I mentioned, the formation of stars is not something that bothers me. However, first of all, I would reiterate that, regardless of the speed, we have no absolute knowledge of star formation:

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/HST/PR/96-29.html
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/booklet/Galaxies.html

The observations, reported today in the online version of the journal Science, show that while gas is falling into the central black hole of the quasar, stars are also forming around that black hole, at the rate of hundreds every year.
from http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/starburst_blackhole_030403.html

So yes, it is presumed; there is a lot of evidence; but we have never actually seen it happen. I think that it might be noted that, in contrast to your slow formation scenario, there are times and places where stars would be expected to form extremely rapidly. It's a fascinating area of study, however we are FAR from knowing very much about it.

I was also checking a recent Nature this morning and ran across this:

Nature, 17th April, 2003 ix
“In the past few years over 100 extrasolar planets have been discovered and with new detection methods, the tally will mount. Many of these bodies have strange, highly elliptical orbits and are far closer to their stars than the planets in our Solar System. With so little in common with the familiar Solar System planets, these newcomers spell the end for established theories of planet formation.”

I don't put that in relative to star formation or lack of it, but relative to our lack of knowledge about very much that is happening 'out there.'

 

Helen

Thanks for the links. Two of those I had not seen before. As an aside, one of the studies was done in part at my college, U. of Alabama, I was happy to see.

I made no mention of absolute times. It is a given that a number of factors will determine the time required for star formation. I was simply proposing that there are many lines of evidence that star formation occurs and that the timeframe, even if you want to bring in the most rapid formation proposed, is longer term than can be allowed for in a few thousand year old universe. The links you provide all agree unequivocally that star formation occurs. To hold to the standard of "absolute" proof would preclude essentially all of the evidence being presented on both sides of the discussions here. In this case, there is a widely accepted process with numerous indepenent lines of supporting observations. If there is another theory that adequately explains the observations I would love to hear it but appeals to presumptions and absolute proofs are not very convincing without alternatives and why the given reasoning is incorrect. I agree that we have much to learn on the specifics and as our abilities to observe and model grow this should be a fascinating area of study. In response to The observations, reported today in the online version of the journal Science, show that while gas is falling into the central black hole of the quasar, stars are also forming around that black hole, at the rate of hundreds every year. A high rate of formation does not necessarily imply a high speed of formation. Plus this shows more scientists looking at data in their field and concluding that we are seeing star formation and the formation is happening in an environment where the cause of the compression of the clouds is obvious. Again, I would love to hear the alternative that explains the details of the observations.

But this is really getting a bit off topic. I divided the responses deliberately.

I am really more interested in the "disorder" line of reasoning. How is disorder defined, what evidence is there of it increasing, what is the consequences of an increase in disorder and how does this give proof of a young earth? (Entropy is not a measure of disorder.)

The disorder reasoning is closely associated with the claim you made of an initial rich ("variable") genome which provided for all the variation seen in populations today. I am very interested in hearing more about this with evidence for it and some discussion of how we got to where we are today.

If I understand the concept of "kinds" somewhat correctly, most families of tetrapods should have ancestry from two individuals (seven if you are talking clean animals or fowls) which collectively held the genetic diversity of all the species in that family. Now, as I understand, there can be multiple versions of genes found at the same location (alleles) that can code for different traits. (When I say different traits I mean things like blue eyes rather than green eyes not widely varying traits.) I can remember reading of genes that have hundreds of variations. And each of these code for a useful version of the protein.

Now, two individuals each with two sets of chromosomes gives at most four varieties of the gene in the initial population. (Even 8 or 14 or 28 initial copies of the gene does not help when dealing with hundreds of varieties.) So where did the others come from? This doesn't agree with the premise of an initial genome that contained all the diversity. To allow for even microevolution would go against the increasing disorder logic. In addition you said "Speciation of insects or anything else, on Hawaii or anywhere else, is not an issue. Variation occurs. Fits into new niches occur. This is only evidence of an original population which had a great deal of variability built into its genome." My interpetation of your statement is that even where microevolution can be observed, that what is going on is the selection for advantages that were already built in to the genome and not the evolution of new adaptations using genes that previously did not exist in their present form.

 

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

It used to be that we associated one gene per one trait. With increasing genetic knowledge, we have found that there are an incredible number of factors involved in traits, and that the inter-relationships of various genes are involved in most traits, as well as the timing of expression.

It is true that when we knock out one gene in experiments on mice and such, that we can knock out a trait. However the opposite is not something we can guarantee -- that by adding one gene we will get a trait. In fact, that is being shown not to be true at all. We can induce modifications by genetic manipulation, but not totally new traits. We can produce eyes on legs, but not on plants, for instance, which have no eyes to begin with. That is a far-fetched example, but I wanted to make the point that unless the basic material is already there for a trait, it cannot be put there by the simple addition of a gene.

We have found that some genes are expressed only at certain times and in certain ways: maybe during early development; maybe only during stress, etc. And these genes interact with others in the development and expression of traits.

So, to make this part short, simply counting alleles is not enough. Even out of two human beings -- especially two with no mutations to damage their genetic packages -- almost an infinite variety can emerge as different combinations trigger different timing mechanisms and amounts of expression, etc.

As far as the animals go, it seems that Genesis indicates creation by population, so we would have much, much more variability there. Plants even today have something referred to as 'plasticity' genetically, so that we can graft a plum onto a peach or a lemon onto an orange, and we can do enormous genetic manipulations -- and even watch some pretty significant speciation happen naturally. Plants are fascinating that way.

But animals are quite different. The plasticity is missing and only the initial variation is possible. This can be quite extensive at times, and therefore impressive, but variation is all it is.

Backing up through your post to order and disorder, I would prefer quoting from a couple of people far more educated than I am in their respective fields, both of whom are 'rabid' evolutionists (in other words, they would rather die than admit to creation!)

If organisms are ever to be understood as material physical entities, physics will first have to be transformed into a science of complex systems. This metamorphosis is already under way, but has proven neither quick nor painless: after half a century, the thermodynamics of erreversible processes (those that predominate in the real world) has chalked up few concrete achievements and remains largely outside the main stream of both physics and biology.

...Thermodynamics and evolution, the two branches of science that revolve around order and time, started out in opposite directions: one views the world as running down, the other as building up, and we are still striving to close the circle.
...A more persistent conflict stems from the prime characteristic of living organisms: their ability to grow, develop and evolve, generating mounting levels of order in apparent defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. That most basic of natural laws mandates that all real processes be accompanied by the degradation of energy and the dissipation of order...
Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell, 2001, Oxford University Press, pp 224, 227

The natural tendency of energy to disperse -- that is, to spread through space, to spread the particles that are storing it, and to lose the coherence with whch the particles are storing it -- establishes the direction of natural events...Natural processes are those that accompany the dispersal of energy...As energy collapses into chaos, the events of the world move forward...Entropy must therefore be a measure of chaos. Moreover, we have seen that the natural tendency of events corresponds to the corruption of the quality of energy.

...The descent into universal chaos is not uniform, but more like the choppy surface of rapids. In a local arena, there may be an abatement of chos, but it is an abatement driven by the generation of even more chaos elsewhere...

There is also another important point. The products of the reaction have less energy than the reactants. The energy in the bonds binding the product is less than was in the bonds binding the reactants: the excess has been carried away in thermal motion... That is the cause of chemical change: in chemistry as in physics, the driving force of natural change is the chaotic, purposeless, undirected dispersal of energy.
P.W. Atkins, The 2nd Law, 1994, Scientific American Library, pp 62-63, 82, 112

Both Atkins and Harold take great pains to show how evolution overcomes these universal processes, and in order to be fair to both authors, that has to be stated. But both make the presumptions that local increases in order also imply the arise of specified complexity, and that is nowhere seen in the natural world.

But yes, the natural state of the universe, according to both physics and biology, is that of a downward trend into disorganization. Bicycles rust. They cannot be rebuilt from rust. Bodies run down and die, and all the science in the world is not stopping that. I think the picture is relatively clear. I hope it is, for we spend most of our waking moments fighting this decline in both ourselves and in our surroundings.

And finally, as far as star formation goes, again it is not really important whether or not we see them form in terms of theology. In terms of what we have observed, we have not seen one form (but that's OK!). However the issue I would have with your comments is that you are presuming very old ages based on the rate of processes we see today. Is there anything you are aware of that guarantees these processes have not, in the course of time, slowed down?

 

Thanks for the long reply. I will have to take some time to sort through it and I won't really be in front of a computer much for the next few days. We may have reached the point where the conversation has gotten out of my league anyhow. I do understand that the expression of genes is rather complicated and there are dependancies on other genes. That is one reason I limited my specific question to many variations of the same gene at the same location.

I will make a short (maybe ) answer to this question.

This general line is one of the areas where a very old earth seems more plausible to me. There are quite a number of things that we can observe happening or to have happened where the preponderence of the evidence indicates a very long time to occur.

Do we know for sure that things happen at the same rate today as in the past? Apparently this is up for discussion. We are up to seven pages on the thread to answer the questions of can we get light from the edge of the observable universe here is several thousand years and can we decay radioactive isotopes a proper amount in the same time frame.

I've also read through a good bit of the material at your husband's web site and some of the commentary on it that I can find. Again the details often get over my head.*

But my feeling is that if you say that physics and chemistry and so on act the same today as yesterday, these long term processes are a problem. If you want to say that they do not, then there should be observable consequences that can be used as evidence and mechanisms to explain how there could be differences in behavior. That is why I ask for alternatives that explain the details of what we can observe.

Have a good weekend.

*Note: This is a problem I run into frequently. I am one of those people that really enjoys reading and learning about science and other things. The problem for me is that I have enough science background that things written for a general (lay) audience leaves me wanting because of the level at which it is written. On the other hand, unless you are talking about my field (anyone want to discuss novel coal gasifiers?), things written on a technical level go beyond my background level and I have to try and follow along. Late last year I found that I really like reading the main articles in Scientific American when I have the chance. (Which so far means one every few months.) From what I can tell, the articles seem to be written by the same authors of the technical papers that get published in peer review journals but dumbed down just the right amount. I am just about to finish the special edition they put out a few months ago that collected a number of high energy physics articles together. And yes, even my coworkers think of me as a geek.

 

>>>>>>>Both Atkins and Harold take great pains to show how evolution overcomes these universal processes, and in order to be fair to both authors, that has to be stated. But both make the presumptions that local increases in order also imply the arise of specified complexity, and that is nowhere seen in the natural world.<<<<<<<
.............................................
Helen, I am glad that you are taking pains to accurately describe the views of Atkins in your paragraph above. But I have learned a little about you by searching on the Internet and I wonder why, on the web site below, you cited the views of Atkins as supporting your position that there is a conflict between thermodynamics and evolution? It is not accurate is it, that Atkins is in agreement with your views about the 2nd law? And yet at the site below, you tried to give that impression.


http://tccsa.freeservers.com/archives/debate/h_vs_fryman_f2.html

 

This forum is not about evidence against evolution, it's about evidence for creationsism. I visited the site in question and there are several inaccuracies. But for sake of this thread, they probably shouldn't be discussed here.