There is no Faith vs. Science

[Hawkins]

1) the content must be untrue due to the lack of evidence

2) the content can be true and can be false

Well, it depends.

If the claim is extraordinary, the evidence must be proportionally extraordinary; if this evidence is not available, then it is rational to dismiss the extraordinary claim.

If the content says that my ancestor was a fisher on the North Sea, I might give it a certain credit, even without additional evidence. Might be true, might be false.

If the content says that my ancestors traveled to the Andromeda galaxy and back, without corresponding evidence, then I dismiss the claim. Simple.

Ciao

- viole

The point is, you have no choice but have to make use of your faith either way. In the end, the question is what would happen to you after death. Everyone will have to have his own answer by faith, there's no middle ground over there. What left is where does your faith go, and whether you realise this "no middle ground' or not.

As for the 'content' situation, you need faith to believe that it's false. As for your approach ot dismiss it, it's not your rationale made that choice, it's your preference. As not everything has a middle ground for you to dismiss, your faith is undergoing a decision making, perhaps beyond your own awareness though.

As an example: when an atheist died in a hospital peacefully due to old age. He's in peace. Is it because that he dismissed all sort of faith, or is it because he has faith that nothing would happen after death while he's unaware of his this faith? To me, he sub-consciously assumed (by faith) that nothing would happen after death. He's not aware of his own assumption (by faith) though. Moreover, perhaps it involves a fallacy that "the absence of evidence becomes the evidence of absence upon which his faith is built.

To give you another example, to which part of human history you ever acquired any evidence? Or are you saying that human history as a whole shall be dismissed ? Or do you consider the acceptance of human history as irrational? Lacking in evidence is actually the nature of what history is! To me your approach of "dismiss" doesn't work in this situation while you mistakenly think that your "rationale' shall be universal (as most atheists do)!

Edited December 28, 2012 by Hawkins

[Guest]

The point is, you have no choice but have to make use of your faith either way. In the end, the question is what would happen to you after death. Everyone will have to have his own answer by faith, there's no middle ground over there. What left is where does your faith go, and whether you realise this "no middle ground' or not.

Yes, but choices are always weighted against evidence and common sense. The alternative would be general skepticism against the majority of things which are nor reproducible because of their intrinsic nature.

Your Common Sense

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:19-22

Is Not My Common Sense

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18

And The Faith Of Your Peers

Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding? Isaiah 29:16

Is Neither The Faith Nor The Joy Of My Family

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. John 1:1-5

So What Seems Rational And Very Good To You

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Genesis 3:1(a-c)

Appears Irrational, Empty And Dead

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands. Isaiah 45:9

To Me

The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Jeremiah 31:3

~

Believe

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

And Be Blessed Beloved

Love, Joe

[Citizenship]

I see common descent as an inference to the theory of evolution which is strongly supported, so the evidence is largely the same. There was an entire thread devoted to this question not too long ago, but the thread was permanently closed. So I don't know how far down the rabbit hole we can go here, and I hope you understand if I decline to get into details as such seems to be the wish of the administration. To answer your question in broad scope: Things like the pattern in the fossil record, the twin nested hierarchy, transitional fossils, and so on all speak to common ancestry. These things are observable, testable, and repeatable in the world of science.

Similarities, patterns and hierarchies are also traits of design, and so I don't think they "speak" themselves, but that someone else is doing the speaking for them. "Transitional" is also something that is spoken into the picture. If you took all the creatures that are alive today, in all their variations, and burried them under layers of sediment for a future generation to discover then they would also find "transitional" fossils, if that was what they were looking for.

When you say "evolution" in this thread, do you mean just biological evolution, or something more?

Something more. Biological evolution is hardly a point of contention in this debate.

You were saying that the only thing we know about God from the Bible is that he is "invisible", I am merely pointing out that the vast majority of biblical scholars and clergy see God as supernatural, and that the Bible (from Jesus' own words) makes references to two distinct types of material, "flesh" and "spirit", with spirit being understood as supernatural and flesh being of the physical world. God is seen as incorporeal, not part of the flesh/physical (apart from Jesus' physical body) rather totally of the spirit. There is more to the spiritual than being invisible, it is something entirely different from the physical, from the creation. At least that is my understanding of scripture and theology.

What non-supernatural designer do you know of that has the intellect, power, and means to create the universe and life on Earth? In my mind either this designer is God, the supernatural, or some nearly incomprehensible alien civilization that has mastered the power and manipulation of entire universes - which may or may not be logically consistent with the laws of nature as we know it. And we really haven't changed the question with the introduction of aliens or other non-supernatural beings that can create entire universes. These aliens were either created by God via supernatural means, or came about via natural means with or without God's involvement. Evolution, or Creation. We only shift the question to another unknown entity when we propose that a non-supernatural entity designed us. I don't know how to escape the supernatural undertones of ID.

The context of what you quoted was strictly an argument for ID, so what Jesus said about flesh and spirit is irrelevant, as is what we traditionally label "supernatural". But even if we did bring flesh and spirit into the discussion, and assuming that the spiritual exists, we know as little about what spirit actually is as we do about gravity. It is assumed that gravity is an invisible force and has an effect on the physical universe. Spirit would, from an ID perspective would be the same thing with the difference that spirit would have an additional attribute that gravity seems to lack, namely intelligence. So is intelligence "religious"? Is it "supernatural"?

If, as you pointed out, the physical realm does not have an effect on spirit then perhaps you could say that it is "supernatural", but from an ID perspective, we don't know whether that is true or not.

————I think you misunderstand Ruse, this is an article he wrote about this very topic: http://www.sciencema.../5612/1523.full

A major complaint of the Creationists, those who are committed to a Genesis-based story of origins, is that evolutionand Darwinism in particularis more than just a scientific theory. They object that too often evolution operates as a kind of secular religion, pushing norms and proposals for proper (or, in their opinion, improper) action. Evolutionists dismiss this argument as merely another rhetorical debating trick, and in major respects, this is precisely what it is. It is silly to claim that a naturalistic story of origins leads straight to sexual freedom and other supposed ills of modern society. But, if we wish to deny that evolution is more than just a scientific theory, the Creationists do have a point......

Three things. First, if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry. Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where evolution is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave. I am not saying that this area is all bad or that it should be stamped out. I am all in favor of saving the rainforests. I am saying that this popular evolutionismoften an alternative to religionexists. Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time.

So Ruse is saying that there are two types of evolution, the science of evolution which is ToE, what I'm talking about. The other type is outside of science and is used as an underpinning philosophy of X Y and Z which often replaces religion, and we should be careful to distinguish between the two. He is not saying that ToE is religion, far from it, he even calls the idea "silly" in the article.

And how did you reach the conclusion that I misunderstand Ruse? On the contrary, I not only understand him, I also agree with him. The "scientific" part of the ToE is not religion. What people do with the rest of it, and how much of it is exploited "religiously" is up to the individual. It is a very broad spectrum.

I am also not so foolish as to believe that evolutionary scientists start off their day by lighting candles, kneeling before the alter of evolution and trying to cleverly figure out how to manipulate data so that it conforms to the ToE. However, most people reach a point in their lives where they decide to reject belief in a creator, which can grow to be more and more uncomfortable, and adopt the idea that everything develops over time, which similarly, can appear to be more appealing.

It is from that point on that, consciously or subconsciously, they will interpret things in the light of the worldview they have adopted.

Scientifically, how do we know the effects of a designer, and how do we know that it was a designer?

I don't think it is as much a question of "design" as it is "intelligence". There creation of something that has the ability to process information and make decisions based on that information has never been observed in nature other than by procreation, whereas it has always been observed as the result of a higher intelligence.

The way it normally works is that an idea goes through the trial of fire by scientists, and if it survives it becomes part of main-stream science. When it becomes part of main-stream science the ideas are then incorporated into the school curriculum at the K-12 level. What evolution did was win the favor of scientists, and it was taught in universities for decades and just about everyone in the science community agreed evolution was a good scientific theory. Then when the Russian commies beat America in the space race, we decided to make our science and math programs competitive which in turn put evolution into the high school curriculum for virtually the first time because that is what was being taught and researched in universities.

What creationism/ID did was try to win the scientific community over, but it failed. When it was clear that scientists were having none of it, they switched their focus to the public schools of K-12. See the difference?

There is also a difference between evolution and creation in scientific acceptance. Yes evolution was at one point controversial, all great theories and ideas in science are, without great revolutions science becomes stagnant. But evolution, or more precisely natural selection as formulated by Darwin, was controversial for a few years, then science came out with a verdict that evolution is correct.

That doesn't address my point at all. Beating the drum for evolution and proclaiming its victories has absolutetly no value as long as we know that the religious motivations for opting one explanation against the other is stronger in this issue than any other scientific theory that mankind has ever known.

What I asked you is what you would do if you were a creationist. What would you do if you saw that the foundations of the reigning paradigm, as "victorious" as it may seem, was predominately based on faith but being presented to the public as a scientific fact? What if all your attempts to question this theory only result in the same, worn-out "well, everyone else believes in it" kind of arguments and contemptuous ad-hominem remarks?

[Citizenship]

Creationism on the other hand has been around for thousands of years, it was the one and only paradigm when science first got started, and it has made virtually no progress since. Creationism had its shot, and it didn't make it.

Didn't make it where?

Let me put it this way, geology is very important when it comes to finding oil. The CEOs in charge don't care about the science, they just want their oil/money and whoever can find the oil is hired. If creationism actually works, at least in the field of geology, they have a great opportunity to become partners to one of the richest and most powerful private sectors the world has ever known. If creationism works there should be no problem getting money, doing experiments, and everything else associated with a productive scientific idea. Don't hold your breath, but the geological paradigm used to find oil is the old-earth evolution paradigm, not the YEC one.

To make my point I want to draw your attention to someone named Glenn Morton, an ex-YEC, and got very interested in YEC geology. He wanted to prove YEC geology and got very into the data, and he worked with YEC geology graduate students, many of them who went to work for the oil companies. After a while he called up some of them and asked a simple question: http://www.oldearth.org/whyileft.htm

But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.

"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"

That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.

Glen Morton has a long history of making and repeating fallacious arguments against creationist scientists:

http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_jw_02.asp

Creationism as an institution is not poor, they're mostly located in the USA (at least those with money), it's a free country, nothing is stopping them from performing top-notch experiments, yet they seem very hesitant to do just that. If ID is such a great scientific idea, you should be able to do experiments and figure stuff out that evolutionists can't. After a while you should be able to say, look what I found, you evolutionists didn't know about this, you can't explain this, look at all this great science we have done under the ID paradigm. But they don't, and they really don't even try.

Excuse me for being blunt but this is utter hogwash. You are simply parroting what other uninformed anti-creationists are saying, and here is some of the work that they have been very successful in convincing others does not exist:

PEER-REVIEWED & PEER-EDITED SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTING THE THEORY OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

they like their sacred ideas challenged and overthrown

No they don't. If they did then they would have rejoiced when Schweitzer made her discovery rather than attack her, and they would also allow the soft tissue that she found to be dated, but they refuse. If the tissue dated to only a few thousand years then that would definietly challenge and overthrow their sacred ideas, so if they "like" this kind of thing, then why are they not doing it?

Remnants of DNA being recovered from ancient remains is an incredible find, and it has forced scientists to revise ideas about DNA degradation but it in no way invalidates evolution or the time scales involved. O

What has "forced" scientists to revise their ideas about degradation rather than time scales? Science shows that DNA cannot be preserved longer than 10, 000 years. So what is forcing scientists to ignore it? You see what is going on?

ne way to look at it is, if dinosaurs are as young as creationists claim, than finding DNA in them should be so routine it wouldn't even make the local paper, let alone world wide news. In fact, just about every single skeleton we find should contain DNA if YEC correct, why don't we find DNA in every single skeleton we find?

What is more likely, that dinosaurs are young and this explains the soft tissue remnants observed, but most fossilized dinosaurs are anomalies as they don't contain soft tissue remnants. Or that dinosaurs are old and this explains why most fossils don't contain remnants of soft tissue, and we have a few anomalies that force us to change our view of soft tissue degradation in the fossilization process? YEC has a lot more anomalies to account for than evolution in this case, a lot more. There are always anomalies in science, regardless of field and subject, but too many becomes a problem.

Scientists don't just go around cracking open dinosaur bones to see if there is any soft tissue inside. For obvious reasons, they are very reluctant to dissect fossilized bones. In fact, the only reason that this tissue was discovered was becaue the dinosaur bones in question were too large and heavy to be tranported by helicopter from where they were found.

The discovery of soft tissue in fossilized bones has been repeated in various dinosaurs. I am not aware of how many dinosaur bones that have been disected without finding soft tissue, or if there are any at all, but you seem to be claiming that "most" do not.

What do you base that claim on?

Edited December 29, 2012 by Citizenship

[Guest]

Remnants of DNA being recovered from ancient remains is an incredible find, and it has forced scientists to revise ideas about DNA degradation but it in no way invalidates evolution or the time scales involved.

Don't Let Truth

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:1-3

The isotope concentrations can be measured very accurately, but isotope concentrations are not dates. To derive ages from such measurements, unprovable assumptions have to be made such as:

1. The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).
   
2. Decay rates have always been constant.
   
3. Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.
   

http://www.christian...g/aig-c007.html

Get In Your Way

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Genesis 1:27-28

During the evolution of petroleum engineering, the areas of specialization developed: drilling engineering, production engineering, reservoir engineering, and petrophysical engineering. In each specialization engineers from other disciplines (mechanical, civil, electrical, geological, chemical) freely entered, and their contributions were significant; however, it remained the unique role of the petroleum engineer to integrate all the specializations into an efficient system of oil and gas drilling, production, and processing.

Drilling engineering was among the first applications of technology to oil-field practices. The drilling engineer is responsible for the design of the earth-penetration techniques, the selection of casing and safety equipment, and, often, the direction of the operations. These functions involve understanding the nature of the rocks to be penetrated, the stresses in these rocks, and the techniques available to drill into and control the underground reservoirs. Because modern drilling involves organizing a vast array of machinery and materials, investing huge funds, and acknowledging the safety and welfare of the general public, the engineer must develop the skills of supervision, management, and negotiation.

...

~

Walking

And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart. Jeremiah 18:12

Talking Away

But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward. Jeremiah 7:24

From The One Who Loves You

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. Psalms 139:14

~

Who Can Say

Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? Proverbs 20:9

Who?

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: Romans 2:10

~

Evolution

Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. Jeremiah 17:5

Or Jesus

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. Jeremiah 17:7

Which One Will You Trust?

~

Believe

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

And Be Blessed Beloved

Love, Joe

[Guest]

Of course, I might be completely wrong. I always have residual doubts in everything I say, as it should be, But I will never be shown to be wrong....

~

No Time For Jesus?

Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights.

Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.

Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.

Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.

Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created. Psalms 148:1-5

None?

And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: Ephesians 3:9

Wait For It

For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;

And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,

And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. John 5:26-29

Wait For It

~

Believe

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

And Be Blessed Beloved

Love, Joe

[thomas t]

Actually, not to be rude here, but I think it's more faith vs evolution.

It depends.

On one side of the spectrum we have evolutionary theists. For them there is probably no conflict at all with any branches of science. That does not necessarily mean that we have examples of harmony between faith and science. It could be that we just see examples of people able to live happily in a state of cognitive dissonance.

On the other extreme, we have young Earth Creationism. In this case, we do not simply have Science vs, Evolution, but Faith Vs. :

- Biology

- Paleontology

- Astronomy

- Astrophysics

- Cosmology

- Physics

- Geology

- Archeology

Ciao

- viole

Happy new year Viole,

I think Citizenship has already commented on this argument. Now, maybe it could be my turn.

Perhaps you could say it's rather faith vs. what most people think scientific theories in cited fields are saying. I think it is rather faith vs. prevalent interpretations of current scientific theories as to what they imply for the origins of the earth.

Some people say that twin nested hierarchy (*) is evidence for evolution. Why evolution? No idea. It could as well be considered evidence for creation, I think. In my opinion they simply say that this is evidence for evolution. They deem (want?) twin nested hierarchy to be that evidence.

(*) since there could be someone reading this and not knowing: twin nested hierarchy, as I understand it, describes the existent analogy in similarities between different animals concerning the genes of the animals, on the one hand, and their morphology, on the other.

Thomas

Edited January 4, 2013 by thomas t

[Citizenship]

Hi Thomas, happy new year to you, too!

I don't buy for a second the atheistic conspiracy of interpreting the biological facts as evolution.

As D-9 already pointed out, even if biological science were populated by atheists only (it isn't), that does not explain how a small minority of atheists could define what is scientific orthodoxy and take over science altogether. Isn't that more likely that evolution has some merit independently of the cultural milieu and upbringing of the observers who study biology?

Second, science, by definition, could never admit that biological complexity is the result of supernatual design. If it did, it would not be science, independently from the fact that said complexity arose or not from a conscious immaterial or spiritual designer. One of the main ingredients of science is to rely on methological naturalism, that is, exclusion a-priori of supernatural intervention. We might agree or not whether this will suffice to find all truths, but, at the end of the day, the effectivity of this paradigm can be validated only by its objective success, and not by its epistemology.

Third, I would like to ask a question that I already mentioned in another thread. The Muslims say that the black stone at the Mecca has a supernatural origin. Do you think that astronomers and geologists, who think that that stone is actually a natural meteorite, say so because they are biased against Islam and don't want to see that Allah could actually use black stones in the desert to make his presence apparent? If not, then you are just applying special pleading, I am afraid

Ciao

- viole

Viole, first you claim that you don't believe in interpretation by "conspiracy" (as though that was the creationists belief), and then you go on to show how interpretation is biased towards what it "admits".

Who needs a conspiracy???

[thomas t]

Good day Viole,

Second, science, by definition, could never admit that biological complexity is the result of supernatual design. If it did, it would not be science, independently from the fact that said complexity arose or not from a conscious immaterial or spiritual designer. One of the main ingredients of science is to rely on methological naturalism, that is, exclusion a-priori of supernatural intervention. [...]

I agree with you on the green one, although a scientist can always have his beliefs in private. I agree with you in a sense that, if God was supernatural, then yes. But maybe he isn't. Maybe he is just hiding in some place...

I don't agree with you on the red one. Science cannot exclude anything supernatural IMO. Even if they work using methodological naturalism only, they cannot exclude God, I think.

What science can do, however, is to formulate a model by which they explain things about the origins of the earth without ever using the notion of "God". If it's that what you are wanting to convey, then yes, I agree.

Third, I would like to ask a question that I already mentioned in another thread. The Muslims say that the black stone at the Mecca has a supernatural origin. Do you think that astronomers and geologists, who think that that stone is actually a natural meteorite, say so because they are biased against Islam and don't want to see that Allah could actually use black stones in the desert to make his presence apparent? If not, then you are just applying special pleading, I am afraid

Ciao

- viole

No, I don't, but I think your comparison isn't just. They ban every scientist form observing their stone, as far as I know....

Have a good day

Thomas

[Citizenship]

How does ID explain the nested hierarchy? Evolution does it through descent and modification, which we know happens, and I think it's obvious descent with modification will create nested hierarchies if you think about it. It doesn't prove evolution, there is no "proof" in science to begin with, but it is a powerful explanation.

Well if we look at the Biblical account we see that it doesn’t describe the creation of life in an unorganized and unstructured manner. God created life organized in groups according to their

environments and traits and reproducing after their kinds, which is exactly what we see today. Of course, he could have created one huge group and just called it “life”, or even created each animal

individually with totally unique traits and using separate mechanisms to reproduce those traits in their offspring. However, the perspective we see in Genesis, and one that I think is reasonable, is that of a

designer with a sense of organization. And the reason I think it makes sense is because it benefits mankind to live in an orderly environment, if it turns out that mankind is important to the creator.

Evolutionists, as I pointed out, did not predict nested hierarchies, but have observed their existence, adjusted the theory accordingly and then, just as you do, proclaim evolution to be a “powerful explanation”.

The only power involved is the power of suggestion.

How does ID explain the pattern in the fossil record? You have simple organisms at the bottom and complex ones at the top. It isn't a hodgepodge of random organisms thrown in together. If you know what you're doing you can use ToE with modern geology to predict what fossils you find where; that is how they found Tiktaalik, the fish to tetrapod transition. In Pakistan you find a great sequence of whale evolution. Again this isn't proof but science isn't about proof, it is about the best scientific explanation. I have heard two creationist explanations for the fossil record, one is that everything was jumbled up in the Flood, but if that is the case we shouldn't see a pattern which we do. The other is that creatures ran away from the Flood to higher ground, but that doesn't work either unless you think flowering plants can run faster than the first dinosaurs .

The fact that you are so ill-informed about the creationists position testifies to the fact that you have spent most of your time saturating your mind with only one side of this debate. Having a predisposition

towards something can cause you to quickly filter out and reject what you don't want to hear and eagerly swallow what you do. The same goes for creationists. However, being in the minority, and given the

large number of scientists that support evolution, anyone would be prompted to carefully study what their opponents were saying before putting themselves in a position where they are going to be called

"backward-striving flat earthers" (to pick out one of the nicer ones). Proponents of evolution are less likely to take such care, because they can just relax in the comfort of knowing that “most scientists

support evolution”.

I suggest however that if you are going to debate this then follow this advice: Know your enemy, not just what your enemy's enemy says about your enemy.

Having said that, I don’t think you will find many creationists explain the fossil record as being simply “jumbled up in the flood”, and saying that the fossils should appear as a “hodgepodge of random

organisms thrown in together” gives me the impression that you compare the global flood with a big vat of water and just mix and swirl and let everything sink to the bottom.

Explanations are rarely as simple as we would like them to be. The general pattern that we see in the fossil record reflects the different environments we find on earth: organisms that live on the ocean

floor are followed by those that dwell higher up in the oceans, then come those that dwell in areas between land and sea, and then those that live on land. That means that if, for example, the Cambrian

was an environment at the bottom of the pre-flood oceans then you are not likely to find any rabbits there. Also, not all animals would fossilize, but only those trapped in the rapid flow of sediments

spreading over the earth, which makes it an issue to be taken into consideration. And then you would have to put the abundance of organisms in the equation, because, given the rarity of fossils,

an animal such as the trilobite might come “before” a rarer organism that is found higher up.

If you know what you’re doing you can use ToE with modern geology to predict what fossils you find where; that is how they found Tiktaalik, the fish to tetrapod transition.

I’m glad you brought up the Tiktaalik, not to be cheeky and arrogant, but because I think it shows how scientists do not objectively study data when presenting evidence. When the Tiktaalik was first

discovered it was proudly touted as being a missing link, and since the place where they found it was where they expected it to be, it looked like they finally had come up with a genuine prediction.

I remember watching Ken Miller talk about it and being really impressed with what he said, because it was really convincing, and Ken is very convincing in the “matter-of-fact” way he presents his

arguments. Unfortunately for him it was debunked:

http://www.examiner....-still-shocking

Can you elaborate? How do you define "evolution" and "biological evolution"? Please be specific. I ask because I don't think we are using them the same way.

The definition of biological evolution is "any genetic change in a population that is inherited over several generations".

How did you arrive at the conclusion that we are using it differently?

The point is gravity is not some mysterious force that appears to be anything but physical. We know gravity is (at least partially) due to the geometry of space-time, and in that respect gravity is not invisible, we have seen the geometry of space-time warped which in turn produces gravity. We have an idea of what gravity is and how it works, even if it is not complete. If gravitons exist than we can point to physical particles that create gravity in the same way we can identify particles that create light. I really do not think comparing gravity to the supernatural is warranted in any way.

The fact that there are ideas about what gravity is does not mean that we know what it is, and if we did know what it is then there would not be considered a theory. You also have thrown the words

“mysterious” and “supernatural”, but failed to show that they apply to the one and not to the other. Ideas are not enough to make that distinction.

How does a non-supernatural entity have the means, power, and intelligence to create universes with such precision as to design the solar system and our planet, and then design millions of lifeforms and seed them on the planet?

That doesn’t make sense. Admittedly the “entity” would have to have “means, power, and intelligence” that greatly exceeds those that we are familiar with, but the sheer magnitude of these qualities

are not enough to associate them with anything supernatural.

And if there wasn’t a designer, then what do you think had the means, power and intelligence to create the universe? Oh, that’s right… nothing…

You seem to be saying that the ToE that says all life comes from a common ancestor and such is religion, and Ruse disagrees with that sentiment. Humans evolving from monkey-like animals

to whales evolving from land animals is all part of the ToE Ruse categorizes as science, not religion.

I may have misunderstood you, so can you inform me what part of the ToE is religion and what part is science. Be as precise as possible on the cut-off point.

You have misunderstood me. I’m not saying that I agree with everything Ruse says about the ToE, but that there is a part of it that is scientific (observable, repeatable and testable) and

a part that is religious.

If you disagree then please tell me how to you interpret him when he says “evolution is a religion”?

Edited January 6, 2013 by Citizenship