Evolution or Creation??

by dottie 172 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  hooberus

  Abaddon said: The theory of god fails to explain why god is not subject to observation, so you can't really make to much of that point, especially as the lack of proof is something you have (yawn) consistantly failed to answer. However, there is evidence supporting the theory of macro-evolution. What evidence do you have to support the theory of god? Yet another thing you've failed to answer. What's your excuse going to be this time?

  Your argument about showing that "god is not subject to observation" and "what evidence do you have to support the theory of god" is not the issue. Everyone agrees that god is not subject to observation. Also the evidence for the theory of the existence of God is another topic.

  The issue here is "Evolution or Creation" The evidence for the creation of any object, from cars to computers is independant of the evidence of a creator for them existing. For example I drive a 1988 Chevrolet pick-up. I did not observe its creation, nor do I even have a clue of who the particular individuals were who may have made it. However I can appeal to present observations about the truck to show evidence that it was created as opposed to evolving from roller-skates. Hense to show evidence that it was created I do not need to "prove the theory of General Motors" or show that "General Motors exists" This same logic can be applied to biological structures, as earlier I said:

  "while creation itself was not observed by man, the site I listed appeals to observations from the present world to show evidence (from science) for creation."
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  funkyderek

  My response still stands abaddon, speciation is not macro-evolution. And as even your own paragraph states "macro-evolution is not subject to observation . . . " Thus we are in agreement about the unobservable nature of macro-evolution. Therfore your argument about the observable nature of speciation (which everyone accepts) does not change the fact that macro-evolution is unobservable.

  Hooberus, I don't understand. You believe that evolution is effective enough to change an organism's genome enough so that it can't interbreed with a close relative, but not that this can happen multiple times? What do you mean by macro-evolution beyond speciation? If species can diverge a little bit in a short time, then why can't they diverge a lot over a longer period?

  Your position seems to be rather like saying that you believe acorns can grow into small oak trees but not big oak trees because you've never seen that happen.
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  hooberus

  More avoidance. Are you ever going to provide a clear explaination of your theory of god? Or is your failure to do this due to the fact you know you can't provide a theory without me and others having great fun flying rings round it?

  Abaddon, when you bring up subjects like "the theory of god" which is not necessary to prove in oder for creation to be true, you should not then accuse others of being evasive and avoiding issues.
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  hooberus

  Abaddon said:

  As for the assurances of peer review you give, well, I needed a laugh. First of all, you don't actually provide any links to evidence (all I said was I wouldn't pay attention to non-peer reviewed material), instead seeking to show how peer reviewed (some) creationist material is. Then, amusingly, all the publications or conferences you refer to are organised and run by creationists. Can't creationist scientific articles withstand peer reveiw by people other than creationists? Are the arguements too complex to understand?

  Such review is not worth a tinkers damn; you are effectively saying, 'Well, the society have provided us with all the information we need'.

  If the work was good enough to withstand stringent peer review, like say publication in Nature, it would no doubt be published in Nature. As far as I am aware, this doesn't happen very often. So, if you can refer me to supporting information that is published in internationally accepted scientific journals, I'll be more impressed. But you still haven't supplied any theory, or any evidence to support the theory. Dull.

  abaddon, your evolutionary magazines do the same thing that you accuse creationists of: For example nature is an evolutionary magazine run by evolutionists, does this invalidate its peer review process?
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  hooberus

  abaddon said:

  Time scale. Extinctions. Slow development of complexity. No evidence of global flood. Order of appearance of life forms is wrong.

  What do you mean by this?
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  rem

  Hooberus,

  Though neither god nor macro-evolution have been directly observed there is evidence in support of macro-evolution, including the fossil record. The fossil record shows an orderly progression of life over time from simple to complex. The fossil record shows many extinction events. Asserting a god specially created each 'kind' and killed them off systematically over the millions of years and recreated them as more complex 'kinds' later that happen retain features of their ancestors (and did this millions and millions of time) is consistent with the evidence, but, as you know, I do not put much confidence in that explanation. Using macro-evolution to explain the fossil record makes more sense to me because we actually do observe evolution happening right before our eyes today.

  "while creation itself was not observed by man, the site I listed appeals to observations from the present world to show evidence (from science) for creation."

  Exactly! And we do see evidence of evolution happening today. The difference between macro and micro evolution is quantitative, not qualitative. Over time many micro-events add up to macro-events. We are using observations about how biology works from the present world to interpret the fossil and dna evidence. This provides great evidence for evolution and no evidence for creation because we have never seen a 'kind' spontaneously created by god in the present, yet we see evolution happening all the time.

  rem
• 

  rem

  Hooberus,

  abaddon, your evolutionary magazines do the same thing that you accuse creationists of: For example nature is an evolutionary magazine run by evolutionists, does this invalidate its peer review process?

  I believe there have been creationists who have contributed articles (not necessarily dealing with creationist topics) to peer reviewed journals such as Nature. Many controversial subjects and studies are published in such journals. The issue is with scientific accuracy. If a controversial subject can be supported by good evidence and the evidence is shown to be accurate, there is no reason why it would not be published. The issue with many creationist papers is that they do not meet the rigorous standard of scientific accuracy necessary for publication in such prestigious peer reviewed journals.

  Edited to add: Probably one of the main reasons you don't see creationist articles in prestigious peer reviewed scientific journals is for the simple fact that no one has yet come up with a falsifiable theory of creation. If the theory is not falsifiable, then it is not worth publishing as it does not meet the minimum standard as a scientific theory.

  rem
• 

  Liberty

  Poor Hooberus,

  Your automobile analogy is greatly flawed. It CAN easily be proven that a vehicle was made in a real physical factory by real physical people so it requires no faith to believe it. My car analogy from an earlier post is far more applicable to God when I stated that claiming Henry Ford's ghost made my car CANNOT be proven and therefore would require faith. We have a world of experience which tells us cars are made by physical makers in the realm of reality but we have little experiential evidence of cars being made by supernatural entities from an invisible realm. To claim that a car was built by a well known automobile company is not an extraordinary claim, while claiming a car was built by ghosts IS a very extraordinary thing, The first claim is easy to believe while the other claim is very hard to believe since there is no experience or evidence of such an extraordinary thing. Evolution is a much more believable method for the creation of the diverse life forms we see in the world today than Bible based Divine Creation. There is a lot of evidence for natural forces working to change life forms and our dailey experiences are full of such evidence. Tadpoles become frogs, fish-like limbless human embryos suspended in liquid change gradually into air breathing limbed land animals, yet no where do we see animals being created by invisible beings out of thin air. There is NO comparison between faith in God and science working out the details of natural evolutionary processes. An invisible, inactive, silent spirit being cannot be studied by any known science, the natural world can be studied, patterns observed, and evidence gathered. Evolution occurs in the natural world, it can be observed and studied here and now and through fossil evidence from the past.
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  hooberus

  Liberty, my automobile analogy was proper with regard to the point that I was making about evidence for creation not being dependant on an extant visible creator. If all historical records were lost about automotive factories and in the year 3,000 Ad someone came across the preserved remains of my truck, they would still recognize evidence of it being created from the truck itself.
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  hooberus

  Liberty said:

  Tadpoles become frogs, fish-like limbless human embryos suspended in liquid change gradually into air breathing limbed land animals,

  tadpoles becoming frogs,as well a human-embroys becoming mature humans is not evolution, but the development of structures by pre-existing DNA. By the way some of the evolutionary "embryo evidence" was based on fake diagrams.

  http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1339.asp

  Above, top row: Haeckel’s drawings of several different embryos, showing incredible similarity in their early ‘tailbud’ stage. Bottom Row: Richardson's photographs of how the embryos really look at the same stage of development. From left: Salmo salar, Cryptobranchus allegheniensis, Emys orbicularis, Gallus gallus, Oryctolagus cuniculus, Homo sapiens. Many modern evolutionists no longer claim that the human embryo repeats the adult stages of its alleged evolutionary ancestors, but point to Haeckel’s drawings (top row) to claim that it repeats the embryonic stages. However, even this alleged support for evolution is now revealed as being based on faked drawings. The embryo photos used in this article were kindly supplied by Dr Michael K. Richardson. They originally appeared in M.K. Richardson et al., ‘There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development’, Anatomy and Embryology, 196(2):91–106, 1997, © Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co., Tiergartenstrasse, 69121 Heidelberg, Germany. Reproduced here with permission.