RE: Young Earth creationism
July 8, 2014 at 4:33 pm
(This post was last modified: July 8, 2014 at 4:35 pm by Crossless2.0.)
(July 8, 2014 at 3:49 pm)Baqal Wrote: I've meet a young Earth creationist today. He stated the following:
1. The Bible is the Word of God, the ultimate truth. God knows more than humans, since He is omniscient by definition, so anything He says is true. Therefore the Bible is true.
2. Humans, on the other hand, will never know as much as the Creator. Because they have a limited capacity to understand, they will always be below the Creator's knowledge.
3. Scientists are limited to observing and testing the principles of nature only for the present. They will never be able to know what happened in the past.
4. Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, was a racist and believed that there were higher and lower races of people. The whole theory of evolution is based on this racially discriminative principle.
5. Are you really asking me to believe that a star, which came out of nothing, exploded and created the whole Universe?
6. Evolution teaches us that humans evolved from monkeys. How can you explain the existence of monkeys today?
7. The second law of thermodynamics, which is part of science, disproves evolution. A scientific law contradicts a scientific theory, therefore the theory isn't true.
It was very frustrating to argue with a person that refuses to listen to anything you have to say against his beliefs. He eventually gave up, but I doubt he's going to question his own faith anytime soon.
I'm now curious. How would've you responded to his statements?
1. Unsupported assertions followed by a non sequitur. And why, pray tell, must an omniscient being be limited to saying only what is true? It doesn't follow.
2. More unsupported assertions.
3. A complete misunderstanding of the power and range of the scientific method. Since there can be no such thing as forensic science, according to your friend, tell him you devoutly hope he is on the jury if you are ever on trial for a capital crime and the only evidence they have is forensic evidence -- no eyewitnesses. If he's consistent in his bullshit, you'll be guaranteed a hung jury.
4. First, if Darwin was a racist (and how many 19th Century people can one name who weren't?), so what? It does not bear on the truth of the theory. Second, the claim that Darwin based his theory on this "racially discriminative principle" is simply bullshit -- a cheap smear against Darwin designed to avoid talking about the mountain of fucking evidence from multiple scientific disciplines that confirms the theory.
5. A seriously addled or deeply dishonest distortion of cosmology. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
6. Humans didn't descend from contemporary monkeys. Each share a remote common ancestor. This is so basic it's remedial. Your friend has no clue what he's talking about.
7. Again, your friend does not understand what he's talking about. The 2nd Law applies to isolated systems (e.g., the universe). The Earth is not an isolated system; we are constantly bombarded by energy from the sun. There can be local decreases in entropy in open systems (you and I are evidence of this truth). Evolution in no way violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
