There is no Faith vs. Science

[Citizenship]

So you're saying that we can determine what is designed by this designer through the intelligence of the design? So because we have the ability to process information, intelligence, we therefore must have been the product of a higher intelligence?

The fact that we can process information is one thing. We have a brain consisting of billions of cells with which we can process that information. But there are organisms that don’t have a brain

and yet do things that require intelligence. A cell for example has the ability to process huge amounts of information and carry out detailed instructions according to the information that it reads.

There is a virus that has the ability to imitate behavior in order to deceive antibodies. None of these things could possibly work without an incredible amount of logic being in place. So approaching

this from a scientific point of view we can only come to the conclusion that it has been designed. Programs do not program themselves. If they did I would be out of business, since I work as a

software developer.

A big problem I see with that is that this designer must be intelligent by the very definition of ID, so therefore someone must have designed this designer, and we get into a never ending regressive pattern of more and more intelligently designed designers, or aliens if you prefer.

That would only be a “big problem” if it could be established that the designer had a beginning. In that case we would not need to involve aliens.

Besides, you made the claim that ToE got into the public schools how creationism/ID is trying to, and I simply gave the historical background that demonstrates such notions are blatantly false.

I made the claim that creationists are doing what anyone would do. What historical background did you give that demonstrates that to be false?

If I was a creationist I would probably wonder why creationism isn't even popular among theistic scientists.

And what creationist do you think hasn’t already done that? Do you think popularity isn’t hard to achieve?

Given the snowballing effect the “popularity amongst scientist” argument has, the difficulty involved in going against the stream, the head-start that evolutionists already

have in indoctrinating people’s minds from childhood, what the media apparatus feeds the public, and so on, I don’t find it all surprising that there are theistic evolutionists.

Maybe the problem isn't with scientists but my own understanding of science.

Well, here’s your chance to convert me. Show me what I don’t understand. I have challenged evolutionists to do so for years and years, but so far all have failed.

If that kind of self-reflection of yourself and the movement is taboo, I would probably be very angry and upset, get wrapped up in conspiracy theories, and who knows what else.

Obviously you are taking the opportunity to answer this question by sneaking in a few ad hominems. I have plainly pointed out that there is no need for a conspiracy. And do I seem angry or

upset? If I was that kind of person then I would have given up years ago.

bjectively though, the thing to do is to convince the scientific community that you're right. Come up with experiments and what not to test your ideas and show that they have scientific merit. Creationists don't really do that though; most of their points are arguments against ToE, not actual positive points for creationism. For children, I do think that it is a good (public) school policy that we only teach children science that is established science in the scientific community, which precludes creationism. I think that is common sense to ensure proper education, but who knows what I'd think as a creationist believing what you believe, to be honest.

You are repeatedly claiming that creationists don’t turn to the scientific community with these kinds of things, but I have already shown you that this is not true:

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

[Guest]

Unfortunately you just cannot deny that creationist ideas are out there for the world to see. Many scientists have read what creationists have to offer and honestly no one is impressed.

Yes Dear One You Are Right And Yes I Just Cannot Deny It For I Am Impressed

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

And Humbled

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 6:14

And Yes Dear One Frankly Most Will Forever Remain Unimpressed

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)

Nor Will They Show Any Wisdom

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

With Imaginations

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

~

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

If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son.

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.

And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. 1 John 5:9-13

Love, Joe

[Citizenship]

Not everything published should be published; it's not conspiracy it's just reality, it happens to non-creationist literature too.

Who said anything about conspriracy? I thought I had been fairly clear in stating that I don't believe in a conspiracy, and that a conspiracy isn't even necessary,

so what's the story? There is no need to have a conspiracy in a world where people are being indoctrinated from childbirth that certain things are true, despite

the fact that no one knows these things. So do you acknowledge my position regarding this, or are you going to continue to ignore it and try to portray me as some

kind of conspiriacy geek?

And really, an article is judged not just on whether or not it is published, but what the reaction is in the scientific community as scientists know that publication is often the beginning not the end of commentary from scientists. Are people looking at their articles in amazement, not really, and to be blunt myself these articles are anomalies, and after skimming some of them I suspect that a few were published for reasons that had nothing to do with ID.

This discussion has very little to do with your opinions about how the scientific community supposedly reacts. Are you a spokesman for that community? Have you gone

around measuring their level of "amazement"? You see how weak this theory is? You don't have any facts to show that evolution has the ability to do what evolutionists

assert it does, so you have to resort to the "reaction" of the scientific community.

Has the reaction of the scientific community has always been correct? Of course not! So by your own admission we can see that you are basing your belief in evolution

on a faulty standard.

You have 50 articles in 7 years, that's a little more than one article every two months, that is really low numbers considering what all encompasses ID and the claims creation scientists have made in the past decades about sweeping reform and ID being the next great paradigm in all sciences of the 21st century. The point is that ID is not a burgeoning area of scientific inquiry, even skimming the summaries presented in the link just about all of them are about attacking evolution instead of positively supporting ID. Even if we go with the presupposition that evolution is false, you still have to provide support for your own theory, in this case ID, and that's a real problem with ID. If we go with papers that positively support ID, we're probably looking at a paper a year or something, that is not impressive at all; a single department at a university will put out more published papers a year than all the creation scientists of the world will publish that positively support ID in a year.

How many articles do you expect to get published given the level of opposition? You have already made the point that the consensus of the scientific community is

strongly opposed to creationism, and yet you are trying to argue that there should be more papers published!

To be fair YECs are known for hoaxes and such in science

Well, to be fair, evolutionists are known for hoaxes in science. Here are a few:

*** removed video ... videos are to be posted in teh video section only. ***

Piltdown man: Found in a gravel pit in Sussex England in 1912, this fossil was considered by some sources to be the second most important fossil proving the evolution of man—until it was found to be a complete forgery 41 years later. The skull was found to be of modern age. The fragments had been chemically stained to give the appearance of age, and the teeth had been filed down!

Nebraska man: A single tooth, discovered in Nebraska in 1922 grew an entire evolutionary link between man and monkey, until another identical tooth was found which was protruding from the jawbone of a wild pig.

Java man: Initially discovered by Dutchman Eugene Dubois in 1891, all that was found of this claimed originator of humans was a skullcap, three teeth and a femur. The femur was found 50 feet away from the original skullcap a full year later. For almost 30 years Dubois downplayed the Wadjak skulls (two undoubtedly human skulls found very close to his "missing link"). (source: Hank Hanegraaff, The Face That Demonstrates The Farce Of Evolution, [Word Publishing, Nashville, 1998], pp.50-52)

Orce man: Found in the southern Spanish town of Orce in 1982, and hailed as the oldest fossilized human remains ever found in Europe. One year later officials admitted the skull fragment was not human but probably came from a 4 month old donkey. Scientists had said the skull belonged to a 17 year old man who lived 900,000 to 1.6 million years ago, and even had very detail drawings done to represent what he would have looked like. (source: "Skull fragment may not be human", Knoxville News-Sentinel, 1983)

Neanderthal: Still synonymous with brutishness, the first Neanderthal remains were found in France in 1908. Considered to be ignorant, ape-like, stooped and knuckle-dragging, much of the evidence now suggests that Neanderthal was just as human as us, and his stooped appearance was because of arthritis and rickets. Neanderthals are now recognized as skilled hunters, believers in an after-life, and even skilled surgeons, as seen in one skeleton whose withered right arm had been amputated above the elbow. (source: "Upgrading Neanderthal Man", Time Magazine, May 17, 1971, Vol. 97, No. 20)

The theory of embryonic recapitulation asserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops. Ernst Haeckel proposed this theory in the late 1860’s, promoting Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. He made detailed drawings of the embryonic development of eight different embryos in three stages of development, to bolster his claim. His work was hailed as a great development in the understanding of human evolution. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist.

The peppered moth experiment is still taught as proving evolution. Apart from the mind numbingly obvious fact that there were both light and dark variants of the moth biston betularia before the changes in tree bark colour discussed in the work, and that therefore it was merely a cyclical variation in slightly different varieties of the same species, it is now established that he researcher Kettlewell faked his results.

and even Schweitzer herself says that the fossil is ancient

Of course she does! She is an evolutionist! And although you claimed earlier on that "if the evidence doesn't fit with creationism, it is invalid according to creation scientists",

we can clearly see that this is exactly what evolutionists do.

I do think once scientists realized that this wasn't another creationist hoax the data was well received overall.

Are you making things up? Please show me one shred of evidence that supports that idea. Mary Schweitzer wasn't a lone wolf, she was working under Jack Horner, one

of the America's best-known paleontologists. Don't you think he would know if he had a creationist working for him? If it was a creationist hoax it would have been cleared

up almost immediately.

I don't know that much about dating, but I did find out that they dated at least one of the bones through amino racemization, which tells me they probably did date the soft tissue remnants to ensure it wasn't contamination, and it came back with an old age.

Both this, and Schweitzers opinions about YEC are distractions from the point at hand which concerned the eagerness of scientists to have their precious theories challenged.

Jack Horner was offered $23,000 to have the bones carbon dated, which he refused to do.

But since you brought it up, lets talk about dating. Where did you read about the amino racemization dating of these bones? TalkOrigins? What TalkOrigins won't tell you is

that amino racemization dating is unreliable:

http://www.detecting...aciddating.html

"Because of these problems AAR dating of bone and teeth (teeth in different locations in the same mouth have been shown to have very different AAR ages) is considered

to be an extremely unreliable practice even by mainstream scientists. "

What they also won't tell you is that C14 is being found in places it should not be found:

http://kgov.com/dating-a-dinosaur

"Yet 14C is everywhere it shouldn't be. Unless from a secondary source, like contamination or neutron capture (described below), anything millions of years old should have NO Carbon-14. However, scientists are consistently finding C-14, as reported in 2011 in the journal PLoS One for an allegedly 80-million year old mosasaur, and as reported elsewhere in natural gas, limestone, fossil wood, coal, oil, graphite, marble, the ten dinosaurs (described above), and even in supposedly billion-year-old diamonds. A secondary assumption by old-earth scientists proposes that the C-14 in diamonds (coal, etc.) must have come from N-14 (or C-13, etc.) and neutron capture. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss (emphasis on the theoretical) told RSF that 14C in allegedly million-year-old specimens is an "anomaly." However, an anomaly is something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. Because modern carbon exists in significant quantities, far above the reliability threshold of the AMS labs doing the tests, these results can no longer be called anomalies! It is now expected that organic specimens supposedly millions of years old will yield maximum C-14 ages of only thousands of years!"

I don't know where you got the 10,000 figure

(Nature, vol.352, August 1, 1991, p.381)

DNA degradation is not fully understood, and multiple factors from climate to soil chemistry are known to change the rate

Nothing that disagrees with the ToE is going to be considered "fully understood". The rate at which DNA breaks down was determined in the lab, under controlled conditions, not in the soil or anywhere else where the rate would be even faster.

It takes time for fossilization, the very fact that dinosaur bones are fossilized speaks to their old age. Bones shouldn't be fossilized at all if the universe is 6,017 years old as YEC claims, or even the 10,000 mark often cited. Soft tissue remnants have been discovered in other dinosaurs, but it requires certain conditions for the remnants to survive, and it is unlikely that many bones will have them. Even with bones younger we do not find soft tissue remnants; it's a clear negative correlation between age and tissue available.

That is totally incorrect. Fossilization occurs rapidly, the entire process of mineralization must occur before the organism can decay. In other words, the time for fossilization must be shorter than the decay time. Most biologic materials decay quickly. Decay can start within a few hours or less, and rarely takes more than a few weeks. Even bones suffer complete dissolution in a few years.

[thomas t]

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.

A "theory" in science is not promoted to fact or anything of the sort; a full-fledged "theory" is the highest honor an idea can get in science. The point is that we don't need to attribute the supernatural to gravity, and we do know (at least in part) what gravity is and it is an emergent property of physical characteristics. I don't know how to interpret that as supernatural.

Hello D-9,

have a good new year.

Let me just add something to what Citizenship already has said. I think we should differentiate between what a scientific theory does perform and what it does not. Gravitation: you can do experimenting about that. How many experiments, that show common descent, can be made? How many experiments that show how fossil records are generated can be effactuated?

You can observe, as Citizenship said, some effects of the fact that animals did live here for at least some thousand years...., but you can't repeat evolution in and of itself (I mean in a large scale in a sense of evolution of all the animals and not only the development of a new rip bone in foxes or something). In contrast, you can let drop your pencil as often as you want.

Thomas

[Citizenship]

That's great, but you don't need hierarchies for design or order; you cannot put cars into nested hierarchies, same with rocks/minerals, and both of those things are designed according to creationism; one by us and one by God the very designer that designed life. So how do creationists and IDers explain the nested hierarchy; why is it a hierarchy and not a mix and match of characteristics like we observe in cars and rocks?

Creationists are usually criticized for making such comparisons and here you are doing the same thing. Life is vastly different than rocks and cars, and evidence of design and order does not need to be ubiquitous in order for it to be considered designed. Hierarchies might not be needed, but they are convenient for us in that they make it easier for us to understand and learn about the various forms of life around us. It also makes sense from a design perspective that organisms sharing the same environment and so on would have a similar genetic make-up.

I can understand how ToE doesn't predict the morphological hierarchy in a historical setting as it was discovered before ToE came on the scene, but I have a hard time believing that the twin nested hierarchy wasn't predicted by ToE, can you back up that statement? And I still contend either way that ToE explains the nested hierarchies observed very very well through descent and modification. Descent with modification naturally creates hierarchies, and that is powerful evidence whether it was predicted or not.

If the twin nested hierarchy was a prediction made by evolutionists then you wouldn't have any trouble at all showing me an older document where this tree was originally mapped out. Now you can easily sit and look at a modern document that has been edited down through the years and get all impressed with how everything "just seems to fit" and tell me that you think that it is evidence of descent with modification, but the fact remains that there is not a shred of scientific evidence that any modifications have the power of doing what evolutionists so badly want them to do. The fossil record is full of huge gaps and the theory of punctuated equilibrium testifies to that.

I have seen creationists say that the fossil record is there in the order that it is because animals ran away from the flood. And I have seen the creationist experiment that compares the global flood with a big vat of water that did just mix and swirl everything; it was done to show that multiple layers can form from a single flood separating out layers by density. I'm not making up creationist ideas, they are real ideas coming from real creationists.

You will most likely find a whole lot of ideas floating around, so have I, but just trowing out a couple of them like this proves nothing. And just because someone does an experiment to show how layers separate by density, does not mean that they are explaining the entire flood by their experiment.

It wasn't debunked. The people who found Tiktaalik knew the moment that they found it that it wasn't the direct ancestor to tetrapods. They knew when they found it that it was "late" in the transitional time period that they were looking at, and the true ancestor should be dated earlier. Everyone in the scientific community related to the issue knew this, and knew to look earlier in the rocks. But because Tiktaalik has such ideal characteristics for the transition it was submitted to the public in simplified form as the transition. And for practical purposes you can view Tiktaalik as a transitional fossil, the merit of the argument really doesn't change.

Why on earth would I want to view it as a transitional fossil? I don't even know why you mentioned it in the first place. It is a fossil of a lobe-finned fish. As usual, there is nothing in the fossil record showing a smooth transition from or to any other fish, tetrapod or anything else.

A "theory" in science is not promoted to fact or anything of the sort; a full-fledged "theory" is the highest honor an idea can get in science. The point is that we don't need to attribute the supernatural to gravity, and we do know (at least in part) what gravity is and it is an emergent property of physical characteristics. I don't know how to interpret that as supernatural.

Describing gravity or its effects does not mean that we know what it is, and I'm not trying to get you to interpret gravity as supernatural, I just want you to tell me how you determine what is supernatural and what isn't.

[Citizenship]

There is a virus that has the ability to imitate behavior in order to deceive antibodies. None of these things could possibly work without an incredible amount of logic being in place. So approaching

this from a scientific point of view we can only come to the conclusion that it has been designed. Programs do not program themselves. If they did I would be out of business, since I work as a

software developer.

Well, first of all, happy new year!

This is an interesting point, althought I am not sure we analyzed the logical consequences of it. Let's suppose, for sake of argument, that the natural design recursion stops at our world. That is, design of living beings and viruses on earth are due to supernatural intervention and not aliens.

The question is: who designed such a complex and intelligent virus? I can only see the following alternatives:

1) it is the same designer of human beings, e.g. God. But that would mean that God had active hand in making this world (with things like smallpox) a fallen world. I think we can agree that this is theologically untenable, if we are the sole responsibles of our misery.

2) it is another designer in competition with God. I doubt this is is acceptable. It would mean that there are two creative forces with more or less the same power and we and viruses are the results of an arm race between these two designers. For starters, it is not clear why God does not simply remove the virus from creation instead of complicating our design with countermeasures (antibodies). As a sofware designer, what would you do? Create countermeasures for a bug in your programs, or remove the bug? On top of that, that would be indistinguishable from dualism (two equally powerful gods, one good and the other evil, in the style of Zoroastrianism). To make things even worse, good and evil would be design dependent. God is good for us, but His competion is good for the virus; i.e. goodness would be anthropocentric.

3) Nobody designed the virus. But that would mean that complex and "intelligent" entities can arise undesigned.

Which of the three cases (assuming I did not forget other cases) is more plausible?

Ciao

- viole

Hej Viole, och god fortsättning på det nya året till dig också!

Weell... should I pick door number 1, or door number 2 (door number 3 is of course out of the question )

Actually I think door number 1 is closest, although the conclusion that God had an active hand in the fall assumes that God originally designed viruses to

behave the way they do now, which is incorrect. The biblical acount teaches that everything in creation deteriorated when sin came into the world, and

agents such as viruses that would have had functions that were exclusively beneficial from the beginning were distorted from that time onward.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Citizenship

[Citizenship]

Hi Viole, yes Swedish is a beautiful language, not my native tongue, but the language that I most often use since I have lived in Sweden most of my life.

The reason that there are immune systems and viruses is little too prone to speculation for my taste so I don't want to delve too deply into things that I for one have on way of knowing. But I will say this. The function of a virus might only need to be distorted, rather than designed, in order for it to turn from benevolent to malevolent. This, in fact, it the way the most powerful and deceptive software viruses work - they exploit weaknesses in existing code.

And yes, as a developer I prefer as simple a solution as possible. But just because an explanation is simple doesn't mean that it is correct, especially in a world where nothing seems to be simple. what is the simple evolutionary explanation as to how a catapillar forms a cocoon, melts into goo, and then emerges as a buterfly? Simple whiteboard sketches of hierarchies are one thing, but reality with all its variations are another.

Now I posed the question as to how intelligent behaviour could have developed in organisms such as cells and viruses, and rather than answer the question, you turn it around with things that you consider inconsistent from a theological point of view. But what is your answer to the question? What then is the "simple" explanation that you consider outweighs that of a designer? Or am I suppose to be so knocked over by the fact that there are hierarchies in the animal kingdom that I shouldn't concern myself with such details?

Edited January 8, 2013 by Citizenship

[Citizenship]

To all, it has come to my attention that this thread has deviated from the original intention of the Outer Court, which is not to discuss science, but to give outsiders a change to learn about our faith. In respect to that I have decided to discontinue all discussions here. Thanks everyone for an interesting exchange. I wish you all the best. /Citizenship.

[thomas t]

Hello D-9,

now that this thread has somehow come to an end, can I ask you a question? Did you learn anything out of this discussion? I mean in a sense that you feel perhaps any closer attracted to the gospel of our Lord and Christ Jesus now?

[...]That's great, but [...]

Have a good evening

Thomas

[Guest]

Don't forget what the great Eddington once said. New ideas do not usually arise because everybody suddenly is convinced by the new paradigm. They become successful because the generation that holds the old ideas dies out.....

And

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

Therein

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

Lies The Rub

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.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. John 3:16-20

~

Believe

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 6:47

And Be Blessed Beloved

Love, Joe