Originally posted by Charles Meadows:
And Scott, when I was first saved I decided to leave my evolutionist camp and go to literal 6 day creationism. I read and read and read. But try as I might I could not find any compelling arguments. Now I'll make the distinction here that I do not support total evolution - but I do support an old earth!
My main reason for not believing in evolution, any sort of compromise, or OE is simply that after reading conjecture from all sides I went back to Genesis 1 and it still says God did it in 6 days (morning and evening). I know to someone trained in evolutionary thought this doesn't sound rational but it is.
No one on either side presents a perfect, irrefutable argument. You note the weaknesses in creationists arguments. OK with me. I, even being a layman, note the weaknesses in many evolutionists arguments just because of the way they are constructed. They attempt to gloss over assumptions but if you have a critical eye those assumptions are always there.
I think you might be more impressed with creationists if it were actually a fair fight. That's why I think it is important to bring intelligent design theories into academia. Fund various theories and see who comes up with the most convincing evidence.
Right now your have thousands of people and millions of dollars dedicated to proving evolution true. Creationists are vastly out numbered and out financed. How can you expect them to be as impressive?
I think to someone who is searching the creationist arguments can be dangerous!
True. But would you acknowledge the same about evolution's arguments? Arguments that are taught as the only valid possibility in our public school classrooms? Up until just recently long debunked supposed human ancestors still appeared in text books. The discovery of Lucy was widely publicized. The info that the soil used for dating this find came from some distance away was not.
How many text books include the very weak evolution of the horse progression? How many acknowledge that radioisotope dating is only accurate to a few thousand years? How many acknowledge that dating methods for evolution are based on assumptions and ultimately circular reasoning?
There are many more problems with evolution that are never discussed or revealed to impressionable young people. This doesn't have to be an inclusion of creationism... it should be obvious though that we should not leave students with the impression that evolution is more certain than it actually is. None the less, a science teacher in Minnesota was fired a couple of years back for pointing out the weaknesses in the theory of evolution and refusing to stop. Why should critical thought not be encouraged about a scientific theory?
In Many of these books you get at the Family Bookstore supposedly refuting evolution are written by morons (albeit well-meaning ones). For a college student who has heard his professor say that ALL the Christians are idiots - if he reads these books looking for real scholarship on the issue - will he then say, "Oh no my professor was right. Christians really are just believing lies."
Or they will say "Oh no, the Christians are right. My professor was treating assumptions as if they were facts."
Some creation books and teachers are weak. Some are not. In fact, some ask questions that evolutionists would much rather avoid than answer.
This can be avoided by always being intellectually honest.
I agree. But that should be a two way street. My honest observation having looked at this issue for awhile now is that evolutionists are more sophisticated in their presentations but have no more real proof than creationists.
They do have something very important though. They have control- of schools, public funding, publications, media, etc. The effort to make creationists appear as you described above is not incidental. It is the mark of an entrenched faith group purposefully impugning its detractors.
At a very minimum, scientists should be able to honestly speak about the problems with evolution.
