Science vs. Creationism

[PearlWatson]

I have noticed that you are well-educated scientifically speaking, which is why I believed you could afford to make the effort to broadly tolerate some earnest religious believers in their set notions, while elucidating some things they might not know yet.

The bolded statement, as I recall, was Pearl's. She and many other "defenders of the faith" will take that position after a cursory reading of Darwin, while failing to note, deep in his text "The Origin of Species" he specifically denies that his proposed view of natural selection has a proper use in discrediting religious beliefs. I was objecting to some comments. . . . possibly I did have some other contributors on my mind. . . .which I felt fell in the class of political rhetoric much used by progressives in minimizing human concepts of God generally.

This response satisfies me, together with the above comment about the mutagen example. Every time we invent a new anti-biotic, and make much use of it, we help to "create" some new strain of drug-resistant bacteria. While it has been my attitude to attribute to "God" a lot things beyond my specific knowledge, and incorporate every finding of science into my schema of the things God has done, I also accept the inadequacy of "Science" to prove the existence of God or anything else that is beyond our power of research. Isn't it great to be free to figure things out for ourselves?

That's a mis-characterization of me.
This debate was the first I've heard "creationism" or "young earth" expounded on. I always just thought of "creationism" as general belief that God created the life on Earth.
I'm critical of Darwin's theory based on scientific and/or logical criticisms, not religious ones. I was fine to go along with the theory before I learned more about it and the criticisms of it.

I also find in my experience that the more liberals support something the more there is something wrong with it, so I tend to be more critical of the things they support. lolz.

If the capacity to draw a diagram and come up with a story about how things might have happened is science, then this Mormon diagram is science:

 

[PearlWatson]

I really don't care if you find it funny or not-- it still doesn't take away from the fact that you know nothing about me

Funny as in hypocritical.
Well, that ain't true unless everything you've said on this forum about who you are is a lie.
As for the one thing I claimed about you...if you are critical of Darwinism you haven't let it show. In fact your continued push for it would mean you've wholeheartedly bought into it.

 

[One Brow]

... humans came from fish ...

Technically, humans are fish that have adapted to breathe on land.

 

[One Brow]

You just got through saying so, and you probably preach it all the time.

Like the Ken bloke in the debate said, there is observation/experimental science and then there is historical science (beliefs/assumptions about the past).

All science is observational, all science is experimental, and all science is historical (once an experiement is over, you can never repeat it exactly again). Ham's difference is artificial and pointless.

But to say one led to another is a belief system in which the scientific method cannot be applied.
The capacity to draw a diagram and come up with a story about how things might have happened is not science.

We have made predictions based on these diagrams and tested those predictions. That's what you want to call experimental, right?

 

[One Brow]

Could those in the Darwinian camp explain to me how simple cells and DNA came to exist on earth?

1) That has nothing to do with evolution.
2) The problem is not the lack of an explanation, but that we have something like a dozen different explanations, and few good reasons to choose among them.

 

[One Brow]

For me the questions come in the mechanism of change and the intermediate steps, which Pearl has alluded to. Without direct evidence of all of the intermediate steps it does require a leap of faith of some sort to get from one to the other, or at least a bunch of assumption.

It's not as it amphibian lungs are exactly like human lungs to begin with. We can see elements of the transition in living creatures today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung

 

[babe]

That's a mis-characterization of me.
This debate was the first I've heard "creationism" or "young earth" expounded on. I always just thought of "creationism" as general belief that God created the life on Earth.
I'm critical of Darwin's theory based on scientific and/or logical criticisms, not religious ones. I was fine to go along with the theory before I learned more about it and the criticisms of it.

I also find in my experience that the more liberals support something the more there is something wrong with it, so I tend to be more critical of the things they support. lolz.

If the capacity to draw a diagram and come up with a story about how things might have happened is science, then this Mormon diagram is science:

all hypotheses are "science" just as much as all experiments, however ill-conceived or moronic. At least in the sense of being part of the historical record. Imagine, all those alchemists with their elemental transmutation methods were "scientists' in their day, and their body of work is still part of the historical record. "Science" is not necessarily "truth" any more than a religious assertion is.

In this sense, "Science" is a process of hypothesis, evaluation, and interpretation. . . . .that is all. . . .

 

[One Brow]

CHARLES DARWIN presented On the Origin of Species to a disbelieving world in 1859--three years after Clerk Maxwell had published "On Faraday's Lines of Force," the first of his papers on the electromagnetic field. Maxwell's theory has by a process of absorption become part of quantum field theory, and so a part of the great canonical structure created by mathematical physics.

By contrast, the final triumph of Darwinian theory, although vividly imagined by biologists, remains, along with world peace and Esperanto, on the eschatological horizon of contemporary thought.

Most of Darwin's theory has, in fact, become even more strongly accepted by scientists than Maxwell's theory, and became evolutionary theory. Most of the lay public can't even tell you what Maxwell's equations are, or what they represent. So even with the general public, evolutionary theory has preeminence. Of course, the real issue with acceptance is that evolutionary theory tells us that we are not special and goes against many closely-held creation myths, but you won't hear Berlinski mention that as the reason for non-acceptance.

This is nonsense, of course. That densely reticulated tree, with its lavish foliage, is an intellectual construct, one expressing the hypothesis of descent with modification.

Actually, it's a model with predictive properties, which has been tested, and either corrected or verified from that testing. Again, Berlinski will not mention this.

Evolution is a process, one stretching over four billion years. It has not been observed.

The second sentence is flatly, totally false.

If life progressed by an accumulation of small changes, as they say it has, the fossil record should reflect its flow, the dead stacked up in barely separated strata.

Fossilization does not occur in a slow, steady way.

but there are gaps in the graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead.(1)

Every time we put some fossil into a gap, creationists point out to the two smaller gaps created, and then say gaps can't be filled.

Before the Cambrian era, a brief 600 million years ago, very little is inscribed in the fossil record; but then, signaled by what I imagine as a spectral puff of smoke and a deafening ta-da!, an astonishing number of novel biological structures come into creation, and they come into creation at once.

80 million years is not "at once".

Where there should be evolution, there is stasis instead--the term is used by the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in developing their theory of "punctuated equilibria"--with the fire alarms of change going off suddenly during a long night in which nothing happens.

Populations are shaped by their environment. When the environment is stable, the population will be relatively stable. When the environment changes, the population changes, or dies off.

"The known fossil record," Steven Stanley observes, "fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."

Gradualism would be a characteristic of stable environments.

This is just the opening section of Berlinski's essay "The Deniable Darwin." To call his reasons for questioning Darwin's theory "hack-like" makes me wonder if Berlinski's critics are more interested in their professed pursuit of truth (wherever it leads) or shouting down those who would dare oppose them.

I call it hack-work because it presents plain falsehoods, distorts the current theory, hides certain facts, and exaggerates the level and types of disagreements among biologists.

 

[One Brow]

God had already created the universe, including a lifeless planet Earth, by the time the first creative day began.

Evidently the six creative days were long periods during which God prepared the earth for human habitation.

The Bible account of creation does not conflict with scientific conclusions about the age of the universe.

However, your Old Earth Creationism still disagrees with the evidence. For example, not only did dinosaurs live tens of millions of years ago, but they died out tens of millions of years ago. The trees bearing fruit were supposed created on the third day-age, but such trees requires flying insects to pollinate them, and flying things were created on the fifth day.

In reality, there were creatures in the sea before there were plants on land, and creatures on the ground before there were flying creatures.

 

[Deleted member 848]

Funny as in hypocritical.

In a discussion such as this one, character traits such as me potentially being hypocritical have no bearing on whether what I am saying is correct or not. Instead of assessing my character, maybe you should assess my posts, and try to find weaknesses in my application of science to explain evolution. You have interestingly avoided that-- which is of little surprise to me.

Well, that ain't true unless everything you've said on this forum about who you are is a lie.

Judging by your assessments, the aforementioned statement really seems to cling true.

As for the one thing I claimed about you...if you are critical of Darwinism you haven't let it show. In fact your continued push for it would mean you've wholeheartedly bought into it.

Because I see the movement of ID more intellectually-damaging, and I would much rather target all of my energy to debunking that ethos than critically analyzing whatever the hell you deem Darwinism to be.

 

[babe]

Most of Darwin's theory has, in fact, become even more strongly accepted by scientists than Maxwell's theory, and became evolutionary theory. Most of the lay public can't even tell you what Maxwell's equations are, or what they represent. So even with the general public, evolutionary theory has preeminence. Of course, the real issue with acceptance is that evolutionary theory tells us that we are not special and goes against many closely-held creation myths, but you won't hear Berlinski mention that as the reason for non-acceptance.



Actually, it's a model with predictive properties, which has been tested, and either corrected or verified from that testing. Again, Berlinski will not mention this.



The second sentence is flatly, totally false.



Fossilization does not occur in a slow, steady way.



Every time we put some fossil into a gap, creationists point out to the two smaller gaps created, and then say gaps can't be filled.



80 million years is not "at once".



Populations are shaped by their environment. When the environment is stable, the population will be relatively stable. When the environment changes, the population changes, or dies off.



Gradualism would be a characteristic of stable environments.



I call it hack-work because it presents plain falsehoods, distorts the current theory, hides certain facts, and exaggerates the level and types of disagreements among biologists.

It(fossilization) ordinarily is a chemical process that takes years of action by silica-bearing water or perhaps other mineral values percolating through the soil with relatively little oxygen, perhaps water whose oxygen content has been consumed by other organic debris in the soil. . . . I don't think we have even developed laboratory methods that could do this inside a year.

I spent some time examining some geological contact lines between fossilized strata and unfossilized strata. It seemed in my specific sites that it was a very sharp line of demarcation. Rates of deposition of carbonate rock vary from place to place. In some sites it can be two or three feet in one year, but the general rate is likely a few hundred feet in anything from ten million to a hundred million years. But what has not been reported is a transitional layer where a few fossils are present grading into something with much more, except in places where the conditions for fossilization were marginal and then improved. . . ..

the sense I get from what I have read or seen would lend more credence to the argumentative position that life came on very rapidly. . . . stabilized for millions to hundreds of millions of years, and then made remarkably sudden changes. . . .over and over again. Probably due to sudden changes in gross chemical mass equations or sensational climate changes. . . .

 

[Tarkanian]

"God created everything".
Evolutionary or other theories are not more scientific than this proposition.