Creationists do not make sense

[Darwinian]

You quite right. The Sun was formed around 5 billion years ago with the Earth 3 to 5 hundred million years later.

Estimates to when the first organism appeared vary from a few hundred million years to a billion years later mainly because the most ancient rocks discovered are about a 3 .5 billion years old and they contain simple organisms.

[Tiberius]

My bad. Was obviously thinking of something else at the time

[rjh4 is back]

Nowhere have I stated that I think one form of life suddenly appeared. I expect what happened was a natural process, panspermia or abiogenesis seem most likely.

Quite true you did not say that. Please tell me how non-life becomes life in such a manner that it is not sudden. It seems to me that no matter how you look at it, at one point the material is non-life and the next it is life. But you can tell me what your view is.

I regret to inform you but we do see *organisms* changing; you even admit this. The fossil record shows this, and we've seen the same with bacteria in a lab.

Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit.

Creationists always seem to accept that 1.0 + 0.01 = 1.01, but then are surprised when you show that if you add 0.01 enough you reach 2. Microevolution you accept, but to not accept macroevolution is to simply deny the fact that many small changes add up to larger changes, namely those that result in speciation.

Adrian, I do not even have a problem with speciation. One can certainly get new species by breeding/reproduction. Big deal. That is consistent with the variability provided in the first created kinds. However, even with the speciation we observe, a bacteria is still considered a bacteria and a dog is a dog. The kind of changes you need for molecules to man evolution is much more than that. Macroevolution requires the types of changes where, for example, a bacteria changes into something other than a bacteria or a dog into something other than a dog. Do we observe such things? Seems to me that the molecules to man evolution that you accept requires something we don't observe. Do you take this on faith?

Someone here said in one of the other threads that it is not fair to require such observations because macroevolution takes so much time. I do not think it is unfair. There are large numbers of different living things. Surely the evolution of one is not tied to another such that every million years or so everything changes into something else. So in all these years of observation, I think it is reasonable to expect that one would have observed some form of macroevolution occurring.

But since you've brought up consistency, let me list some things that your view aren't consistent with:

1) The oldest fossils are those of small undeveloped creatures. As you go up through the geologic column, you find more and more complex forms of life preserved. If these organisms were all created at the same time, why are they separated like this?

I know I have seen pictures in textbooks that show this and people say it. How sure are you that it is always true? Are you relying on the books or have you seen the evidence yourself? Anyway, if the bulk of the fossil record is due to a global catastrophe, the simpler creatures would have had less ability to avoid being buried in sediment and would have been buried first and the complex ones would have more ability to avoid being buried in sediment and would have been buried later. It may also have to do with where the various creatures lived at the time, i.e., land vs. sea. So the fact that we see this generally is not inconsistent with my world view.

2) Nowhere in the fossil record do we see the sudden appearance of multiple forms of life. Indeed, the Cambrian "explosion" (which can be said to be the closest thing to this) took several million years.

That whole statement is based on an evolutionary/naturalistic view. It is like you are saying: "This is how it is and it is inconsistent with Biblical creation so please explain." My explanation is that I think you are wrong in your interpretation to begin with. So your interpretation does not affect mine. Your interpretation is certainly inconsistent with mine but your interpretation is not something that makes my interpretation internally inconsistent.

3) All dating methods confirm that the Earth is 6 billion years old, and that life first began around 4 billion years ago. The scientific estimate for the start of the universe is 13.7 billion years ago. How does this not contradict your view of a "young" Earth?

All? I don't think so. Maybe all the ones accepted by evolutionary scientists. There are dating methods by scientists who accept creation where the dates are much less than this. But I would guess that you would dismiss such methods because those scientists are bias. In any event, all dating techniques require one to make unprovable assumptions, such as the original levels of parent and daughter isotopes. If you want to believe that the unprovable assumptions provide an accurate picture of the real time frames involved, go for it. I do not. If you want to believe and put all you trust in men, who weren't there, and their abilities and guesses and reject the revelation of the One who was, that is up to you. So while the time frames you are talking about would be inconsistent with my world view, since they are based on unprovable assumptions, I do not accept them.

[Tiberius]

Quite true you did not say that. Please tell me how non-life becomes life in such a manner that it is not sudden. It seems to me that no matter how you look at it, at one point the material is non-life and the next it is life. But you can tell me what your view is.

I gave you two already: panspermia and abiogenesis. If you mean "sudden" as in one moment there wasn't life, then there was, then of course, technically that would be the case. What I took your words to mean was that I believed that one day, for no apparent reason, there was suddenly life. I highly doubt this is the case. I believe there are perfectly rational and natural reasons for life forming, slowly, over time.

Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit.

You don't admit it. You limit it because it defies your creationism story. You admit to small change, but as soon as those changes add up, you deny large change ever occurs.

Adrian, I do not even have a problem with speciation. One can certainly get new species by breeding/reproduction. Big deal. That is consistent with the variability provided in the first created kinds. However, even with the speciation we observe, a bacteria is still considered a bacteria and a dog is a dog. The kind of changes you need for molecules to man evolution is much more than that. Macroevolution requires the types of changes where, for example, a bacteria changes into something other than a bacteria or a dog into something other than a dog. Do we observe such things? Seems to me that the molecules to man evolution that you accept requires something we don't observe. Do you take this on faith?

Simply not the case I'm afraid. Remember the "transitional forms" I talked about earlier? They all represent a transition between what you creationists love to label "kinds". Tiktaalik is a transition between fish and reptile, Archaeopteryx is a transition between reptile and birds.

Those examples are really rather wonderful visualizations of evolution in action. It isn't often the case that you can see the transformation so clearly, due to the nature of evolution. For example, going back to my number example, let's say 1.0 is a organism.

It reproduces and gives birth to 1.01, which is a mutated form of 1.0. 1.01 isn't very different at all to 1.0 (it's still a "1.0" kind), but it *is* different. 1.01 gives birth to 1.02, which again isn't much different to 1.01, but it *is* different. The differences between 1.02 and 1.0 aren't very different either, but there are more than 1.01 and 1.0.

Continue this down the line and you get to organism 1.50, which isn't very different to it's recent ancestors (1.49, 1.48, 1.30, etc), but it strikingly different to 1.0 due to the sheer number of mutations that have taken place in between. However, 1.0 is long since extinct and only by looking at the fossils of 1.0 could we make a comparison.

By the time we get to 2.0, the organism is a completely different kind to it's early ancestor 1.0, and yet throughout the entire line of mutations, never did an organism produce something that wasn't *like* itself in some way. It's just that every time such organisms reproduced, they got further and further away from their ancestors.

Nobody (only creationists misinterpreting evolution) says that 1.0 gives birth to 2.0, or even 1.1 or 1.5. What evolution says is that small changes over time build up so larger changes, eventually reaching speciation, and even the change of a family group.

Someone here said in one of the other threads that it is not fair to require such observations because macroevolution takes so much time. I do not think it is unfair. There are large numbers of different living things. Surely the evolution of one is not tied to another such that every million years or so everything changes into something else. So in all these years of observation, I think it is reasonable to expect that one would have observed some form of macroevolution occurring.

The evidence and observation is there in the fossil record. As I've said before, macroevolution isn't a organism suddenly producing a different kind of organism, hence why you don't see it in day to day life, or even over the span of several years. What you do find though, is that looking back over the fossil record (many millions of years), this observation is true.

Of course, another reason why we haven't seen this kind of thing is that our own species has only been around for 200,000 years tops, and we haven't been communicating as civilizations or even as record keepers for that long at all. Indeed, the theory of evolution was only proposed 150 years ago. However, we have seen some forms of macroevolution, usually on a small scale, like Lenski's e-coli experiment. I suggest you look it up.

I know I have seen pictures in textbooks that show this and people say it. How sure are you that it is always true? Are you relying on the books or have you seen the evidence yourself? Anyway, if the bulk of the fossil record is due to a global catastrophe, the simpler creatures would have had less ability to avoid being buried in sediment and would have been buried first and the complex ones would have more ability to avoid being buried in sediment and would have been buried later. It may also have to do with where the various creatures lived at the time, i.e., land vs. sea. So the fact that we see this generally is not inconsistent with my world view.

You only need to visit a coastline to see the layers yourself. The grand canyon in America is also a great place to see it for yourself. However, it takes a great misunderstanding of the fossil record and the geologic column to say that it is the result of a flood. The geologic columns has many many layers, all formed one after the other. The layer builds up over time, solidifies, and then the next layer builds up and solidifies. Not only this, but different types of layers can be seen, indicated the environment at the time, and how the layer was formed. A flood doesn't leave multiple layers, it leaves one. It mixes everything up and leaves it in one layer. The only way one could argue that the geologic column was the result of a flood was if multiple floods happened over multiple times in history. However the different types of layer formed does not reflect this at all.

As for your complexity argument, it fails on two levels. Firstly that "simple" vs "complex" only holds for survival in an environment. Floods are anomalies to that environment, and thus it could be that relatively simple animals are faster at escaping from floods than "complex" animals. For instance, larger dinosaurs couldn't run very fast at all, and would be in all likelihood killed in a rapid flood. Smaller animals with the ability to climb trees and scurry off or cling to branches would be more likely to surive.

Secondly, assuming your argument is true, why are all the birds not in the very top layer? Why are there layers with large and small animals in them that are above bird fossils?

That whole statement is based on an evolutionary/naturalistic view. It is like you are saying: "This is how it is and it is inconsistent with Biblical creation so please explain." My explanation is that I think you are wrong in your interpretation to begin with. So your interpretation does not affect mine. Your interpretation is certainly inconsistent with mine but your interpretation is not something that makes my interpretation internally inconsistent.

My interpretation has all the evidence. There is no evidence that holds creationism over evolution; if there was, it would be creationism that was the scientific accepted norm. Science works by eliminating theories that don't hold to the evidence, and creationism was thrown out years ago.

All? I don't think so. Maybe all the ones accepted by evolutionary scientists. There are dating methods by scientists who accept creation where the dates are much less than this. But I would guess that you would dismiss such methods because those scientists are bias. In any event, all dating techniques require one to make unprovable assumptions, such as the original levels of parent and daughter isotopes. If you want to believe that the unprovable assumptions provide an accurate picture of the real time frames involved, go for it. I do not. If you want to believe and put all you trust in men, who weren't there, and their abilities and guesses and reject the revelation of the One who was, that is up to you. So while the time frames you are talking about would be inconsistent with my world view, since they are based on unprovable assumptions, I do not accept them.

Name a method that gives results of 6,000 years then. There will be papers out there debunking the claims, revealing the unreliable and dishonest tactics used to make the result. Kent Hovind has tried this multiple times, and each time he's been caught. Numerous creationists have either lied, misinterpreted, or ignored results to bolster their beliefs. It's the only thing they can do when all he evidence is against them and they don't want to admit they were wrong.

There is nothing unprovable concerning radiometric dating. It's a highly developed science, constantly under scrutiny, but confirmed through samples of known age, and also through other dating methods. The people who developed it have systems in place for detecting error brought forth by all the "problems" you outlined. If they didn't do this, it wouldn't be an example of science.

I'd also like to finally point out the hypocrisy of your position, that of claiming I believe in unprovable dating methods, when you believe in an unprovable "One who was". Prove to me that God was there, that the Bible outlines exactly how he did it, and when, and then you'll stop being a hypocrite. Your view is based on far more unprovable assumptions than mine.

[rjh4 is back]

If you mean "sudden" as in one moment there wasn't life, then there was, then of course, technically that would be the case.

That is all I meant by “sudden”.

Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit.

You don't admit it.

I wish you would make up your mind.

In a post a while back you said: “I regret to inform you but we do see *organisms* changing; you even admit this.” (emphasis added)

To this I responded: "Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit. "

And now you say: "You don't admit it."

Doesn't make sense to me.

Simply not the case I'm afraid. Remember the "transitional forms" I talked about earlier? They all represent a transition between what you creationists love to label "kinds". Tiktaalik is a transition between fish and reptile, Archaeopteryx is a transition between reptile and birds.

Those examples are really rather wonderful visualizations of evolution in action. It isn't often the case that you can see the transformation so clearly, due to the nature of evolution. For example, going back to my number example, let's say 1.0 is a organism.

It reproduces and gives birth to 1.01, which is a mutated form of 1.0. 1.01 isn't very different at all to 1.0 (it's still a "1.0" kind), but it *is* different. 1.01 gives birth to 1.02, which again isn't much different to 1.01, but it *is* different. The differences between 1.02 and 1.0 aren't very different either, but there are more than 1.01 and 1.0.

Continue this down the line and you get to organism 1.50, which isn't very different to it's recent ancestors (1.49, 1.48, 1.30, etc), but it strikingly different to 1.0 due to the sheer number of mutations that have taken place in between. However, 1.0 is long since extinct and only by looking at the fossils of 1.0 could we make a comparison.

By the time we get to 2.0, the organism is a completely different kind to it's early ancestor 1.0, and yet throughout the entire line of mutations, never did an organism produce something that wasn't *like* itself in some way. It's just that every time such organisms reproduced, they got further and further away from their ancestors.

Nobody (only creationists misinterpreting evolution) says that 1.0 gives birth to 2.0, or even 1.1 or 1.5. What evolution says is that small changes over time build up so larger changes, eventually reaching speciation, and even the change of a family group.

If such gradual changes and transitional forms are so clear in the fossil record, I wonder why Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould felt the need to publish a paper developing the theory of punctuated equilibrium.

A flood doesn't leave multiple layers, it leaves one. It mixes everything up and leaves it in one layer. The only way one could argue that the geologic column was the result of a flood was if multiple floods happened over multiple times in history. However the different types of layer formed does not reflect this at all.

If you are talking about the various lamina of the fossil record, I think you are incorrect. If you are talking about something else, you will need to explain what you mean.

See Mt. St. Helens

Numerous creationists have either lied, misinterpreted, or ignored results to bolster their beliefs.

Are you suggesting that no evolutionary scientist has done this to bolster their beliefs/position?

There is nothing unprovable concerning radiometric dating.

Then please explain how they prove what the original amounts of parent and daughter isotopes are in a sample that is allegedly millions or billions of years old. Are you saying they do not need to know this to come up with a date?

I'd also like to finally point out the hypocrisy of your position, that of claiming I believe in unprovable dating methods, when you believe in an unprovable "One who was". Prove to me that God was there, that the Bible outlines exactly how he did it, and when, and then you'll stop being a hypocrite. Your view is based on far more unprovable assumptions than mine.

Seems to me you made the claim about believing in dating methods. I merely said why I do not accept them. I also told you that God and the Bible as the word of God were my presupposition (first principle) right up front. In my world view they are what everything else rests on. It is my understanding that first principles in one’s world view are taken as axiomatic. So while you say I am a hypocrite, I do not think telling you the basis for my world view and then explaining how this affects how I think about something like dating methods is at all hypocritical.

[downbeatplumb]

If such gradual changes and transitional forms are so clear in the fossil record, I wonder why Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould felt the need to publish a paper developing the theory of punctuated equilibrium.


If an enviroment changes very little, then there is only a need for refinement of already adapted forms.

You are, for example, different from your parents, but there are no fundamental issues affecting your survival or reproduction that would favour one trait over another. So although you are different you are only a bit different. So the species changes gradually.

But if a lush area becomes arid, or a cold area becomes warm, there is bigger environmental pressure on evolution, so bigger changes happen over a relatively small time.

Fits perfectly with the theory of evolution.

The alternative 'magic man dun it' does not cut the ice.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

@meatvampire;


Are you perhaps under the impression that (1) human beings as a species are rational and (2) In principle, our core beliefs are reached and maintained through reason?

I have never seen any evidence to support either assertion as a general principle. Although we are capable of rational thought,we seem quite incapable of consistent rational thought. I think humans are more accurately described as rational-ISING animals.

Our core beliefs are inculcated without reason before the age of five,becoming part of one's world view which the majority of people never question as adults. A graphic demonstration is the millions of people who cling to what can accurately described as the irrational and willfully ignorant notion of creationism.

[theVOID]

Lol ^_^ Darn good question I say...

How could that even happen?

Maybe... in a galaxy far far away...

Nope, laws of nature still apply there.

[brendanch1993]

What if this "God" being was the one driving evolution? what if he was the one that sparked the big bang and all of our evolution will eventually lead to that "perfect being?" It might not be that ONE group (Athiest) of the other (christian) is right and the other is wrong, but a combination of the two. I'm just speculating. I don't want anyone thinking that I am some stupid religious moron, but it might not be so black and white.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

What tree did the Platypus come from?

Indeed,or the kangaroo?