Let's Discuss Scientific Objections to Evolution

[The Barbarian]

20 minutes ago, Tristen said:

So then, “answersingenesis”, one of the oldest and more recognised YEC organisations, calls the idea of species fixity a “false idea”. That actually agrees with what I said. No one representing the contemporary creationist movement taught 'fixity of species'. It is therefore disingenuous to claim 'fixity of species' was ever a typical position of modern creationism. It is misleading to attribute “a false idea had crept into the church” to creationists before the creationist distinction even existed.

Dr. Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, and the author of six best-selling books, criticized Darwin’s theory of evolution by noting that “no one has ever demonstrated one species changing to another species.”

https://cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/dr-carson-evolution-no-one-has-ever-demonstrated-one-species-changing-another

Carson also thinks that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain, so...

From the Institute for Creation Research:

But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another.

https://www.icr.org/article/no-fruit-fly-evolution-even-after-600/

They are wrong, of course, but the ICR is a major creationist organization.

The Discovery Institute is a major creationist organization:

But no one has ever observed primary speciation. Evolution’s smoking gun has never been found.

https://www.discovery.org/a/10661/

There's a lot more, but you get the idea.   Yes, many creationists have recently changed their beliefs about speciation.   But many have not.

 

30 minutes ago, Tristen said:

This is miss-representative. Augustine admits that he finds it “extremely difficult” to see how the first days of creation could be like other days before the creation of the sun.

He says:

24-hours days “are not at all like [the days of Genesis 1], but very, very different.”

Clearly, he knew that they weren't even time periods.

And it's true that Augustine faced with a choice between eternal Earth and a created Earth, chose the created one.   The science of his day gave him no reason to believe the Earth was ancient beyond a few thousand years.    But Augustine also was aware that his assumption could be wrong.    He argued that when scripture did not clearly state somethings, we should be willing, if new evidence comes to light, to revise our understanding of those things.

If Augustine were alive today, he would believe that the Earth is very, very old.

 

 

[David1701]

7 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

As you learned, even long before anyone knew about evolution, Christians like St. Augustine showed they they could not be literal days.

Augustine’s View of the Creation Days

So what specifically does Augustine think Genesis 1 “literally” means? In his finished literal commentary, Augustine emphasizes the ineffability of the creation act, and our difficulty in accessing its meaning: “it is indeed an arduous and extremely difficult task for us to get through to what the writer meant with these six days, however concentrated our attention and lively our minds.”

Ultimately, Augustine affirms that ordinary 24-hours days “are not at all like [the days of Genesis 1], but very, very different.” In Augustine’s view, God creates all things simultaneously, and the 7-day construct in Genesis 1 is an accommodation in which “the Scriptural style comes down to the level of little ones and adjusts itself to their capacity.” Specifically, he affirms that the ordering of Genesis is not according to temporal sequence but rather the ordering of angelic knowledge. Thus, Augustine not only distinguished the days of Genesis 1 from ordinary 24-hour days, he also distinguished God’s initial creative act from his subsequent activity in creation:

https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/09/did-augustine-read-genesis-1-literally/

Your attempt to justify them by morning and evening and number is just ad hoc rationalization.   As Augustine pointed out, it's absurd to have mornings and evenings with no sun present.

 

Even if Augustine's opinion had been that they could not be literal days, it would just have meant that he was almost as wrong as you are.  Yom always means a literal day, when accompanied by morning, evening or a number (day one, day two, etc.).  You can check biblical usage for yourself, if you doubt it.

You obviously don't know what an "ad hoc" fallacy is.  The full thing is "ad hoc, ergo propter hoc" (after this, therefore because of this).  It is used when someone claims that, because "x" follows "y" chronologically, therefore "x" must be caused by "y".  I did nothing like that.

God created light before he created the sun, so any objection based on the lack of a sun is a gratuitous rationalisation.

Quote

Mutation produces new genetic information.   That's how it works.   Every new mutation in a population increases information.   But if you don't think so, I'd be happy to see your math.   What do you have?   If you have no idea how genetic information is determined in a population, I'd be pleased to show you a simple example that requires very little mathematical understanding.    Would you like to see that?

Mutations damage existing information.  They can be harmless, harmful, or, in specific circumstances, they can be beneficial; but they are not new information.

[The Barbarian]

28 minutes ago, David1701 said:

Even if Augustine's opinion had been that they could not be literal days, it would just have meant that he was almost as wrong as you are.

He's obviously a better theologian than either of us.   So there is that.   He's a doctor of the Church and highly regarded by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Protestants.

30 minutes ago, David1701 said:

Yom always means a literal day, when accompanied by morning, evening or a number (day one, day two, etc.).  

No.  For example, as St. Augustine showed, the word doesn't mean literal day in Genesis.  You've just assumed what you proposed to prove.

Your attempt to justify them by morning and evening and number is just ad hoc rationalization.

31 minutes ago, David1701 said:

You obviously don't know what an "ad hoc" fallacy is. 

You obviously don't know the difference between a rationalization and a fallacy.   They aren't the same things. 

32 minutes ago, David1701 said:

God created light before he created the sun, so any objection based on the lack of a sun is a gratuitous rationalisation.

Now, that's a fallacy.  If your argument requires you to redefine "morning" and "evening" to make your case, that's a pretty good clue for you.

Mutation produces new genetic information.   That's how it works.   Every new mutation in a population increases information.   But if you don't think so, I'd be happy to see your math.   What do you have?   If you have no idea how genetic information is determined in a population, I'd be pleased to show you a simple example that requires very little mathematical understanding.    Would you like to see that?

34 minutes ago, David1701 said:

Mutations damage existing information. 

That's a common superstition of creationists, but it's false.   Perhaps you don't know what "information" means in science.   What do you think it means?

As you learned earlier, every new mutation in a population increases information.    Is it possible you don't know how information is determined in a population genome?   I'd be pleased to show you, if you don't understand it.

 

 

 

[Tristen]

10 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

Dr. Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, and the author of six best-selling books, criticized Darwin’s theory of evolution by noting that “no one has ever demonstrated one species changing to another species.”

https://cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/dr-carson-evolution-no-one-has-ever-demonstrated-one-species-changing-another

Carson also thinks that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain, so...

From the Institute for Creation Research:

But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another.

https://www.icr.org/article/no-fruit-fly-evolution-even-after-600/

They are wrong, of course, but the ICR is a major creationist organization.

The Discovery Institute is a major creationist organization:

But no one has ever observed primary speciation. Evolution’s smoking gun has never been found.

https://www.discovery.org/a/10661/

There's a lot more, but you get the idea.   Yes, many creationists have recently changed their beliefs about speciation.   But many have not.

None of these quotes is technically incorrect (or "wrong"). The usual response is that speciation is a very slow process that occurs over generations (which is fair). Nevertheless, none of these quotes is related to the 'fixity of species' concept.

 

10 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

He says:

24-hours days “are not at all like [the days of Genesis 1], but very, very different.”

Clearly, he knew that they weren't even time periods.

This is an out-of-context interpretation. Based on questionable sources, Augustine came to the conclusion that the creation was instantaneous. He reconciled this to Genesis, not by claiming the days were symbolic, but by claiming the days before the sun (day 4) were "very, very different" to subsequent days.

 

10 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

He argued that when scripture did not clearly state somethings, we should be willing, if new evidence comes to light, to revise our understanding of those things.

If Augustine were alive today, he would believe that the Earth is very, very old.

And by "new evidence" you mean new stories of the past that are explicitly designed to explain nature without God. And by "scripture did not clearly state somethings", you mean something scripture stated in the clearest possible terms. And by "revise our understanding of those things" you mean we should dismiss the clearest understanding of scripture, and subject our interpretation of scripture to the authority of external, secular sources.

Augustine initially claimed that the creation occurred in an instant. He further claimed that the primary interpretation of Genesis should be non-allegorical. He admitted that when he deviated from this hermeneutical approach, his ideas were not in harmony with the words of scripture. And he heavily criticised any claim of long ages as a deception. By any meaningful definition, Augustine was a Young Earth Creationist.

 

 

[The Barbarian]

42 minutes ago, Tristen said:

None of these quotes is technically incorrect (or "wrong"). The usual response is that speciation is a very slow process that occurs over generations (which is fair). Nevertheless, none of these quotes is related to the 'fixity of species' concept.

They are all wrong.   There are a number of observed speciations in the literature.

43 minutes ago, Tristen said:

This is an out-of-context interpretation. Based on questionable sources, Augustine came to the conclusion that the creation was instantaneous.

After which, the universe unfolded as God intended.  He didn't think it all popped out fully-formed.

44 minutes ago, Tristen said:

He reconciled this to Genesis, not by claiming the days were symbolic, but by claiming the days before the sun (day 4) were "very, very different" to subsequent days.

No, that's wrong, too.  

In Augustine’s view, God creates all things simultaneously, and the 7-day construct in Genesis 1 is an accommodation in which “the Scriptural style comes down to the level of little ones and adjusts itself to their capacity.” Specifically, he affirms that the ordering of Genesis is not according to temporal sequence but rather the ordering of angelic knowledge.

 Thus, Augustine not only distinguished the days of Genesis 1 from ordinary 24-hour days, he also distinguished God’s initial creative act from his subsequent activity in creation:

When we reflect upon the first establishment of creatures in the works of God from which he rested on the seventh day, we should not think either of those days as being like these ones governed by the sun, nor of that working as resembling the way God now works in time; but we should reflect rather upon the work from which times began, the work of making all things at once, simultaneously.

https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/09/did-augustine-read-genesis-1-literally/

47 minutes ago, Tristen said:

And by "new evidence" you mean new stories of the past that are explicitly designed to explain nature without God.

No, you got that wrong, too.   St. Augustine realized that (as St. Paul observed) that creation itself was an important source of information about God and His work.

49 minutes ago, Tristen said:

And by "scripture did not clearly state somethings", you mean something scripture stated in the clearest possible terms.

That would be putting words in St. Augustine's mouth.   Words he never said or wrote.    There is much that is true that is not clearly stated in scripture.

50 minutes ago, Tristen said:

And by "revise our understanding of those things" you mean we should dismiss the clearest understanding of scripture, and subject our interpretation of scripture to the authority of external, secular sources.

Again, that would be a misrepresentation of what St. Augustine wrote. 

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,… and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7].”” -St. Augustine, “De Genesi ad Litteram” (“The Literal Meaning of Genesis”—an unfinished work)

He's talking to you.

And as you know, YE creationism was the invention of the Seventh-Day Adventists in the 20th century.    As late as the Scopes trial, almost all creationists were OE creationists.  Spurgeon, the Baptist evangelist, wrote about millions of years of history.    So did Billy Graham, who saw nothing in evolution that was inconsistent with God's word.   YE is a very modern revision of Genesis.

 

 

[David1701]

15 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

He's obviously a better theologian than either of us.   So there is that.   He's a doctor of the Church and highly regarded by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Protestants.

No.  For example, as St. Augustine showed, the word doesn't mean literal day in Genesis.  You've just assumed what you proposed to prove.

Your attempt to justify them by morning and evening and number is just ad hoc rationalization.

You obviously don't know the difference between a rationalization and a fallacy.   They aren't the same things. 

Now, that's a fallacy.  If your argument requires you to redefine "morning" and "evening" to make your case, that's a pretty good clue for you.

Mutation produces new genetic information.   That's how it works.   Every new mutation in a population increases information.   But if you don't think so, I'd be happy to see your math.   What do you have?   If you have no idea how genetic information is determined in a population, I'd be pleased to show you a simple example that requires very little mathematical understanding.    Would you like to see that?

That's a common superstition of creationists, but it's false.   Perhaps you don't know what "information" means in science.   What do you think it means?

As you learned earlier, every new mutation in a population increases information.    Is it possible you don't know how information is determined in a population genome?   I'd be pleased to show you, if you don't understand it.

 

 

 

I've already answered you about day one, day two, etc., in Genesis 1.  You won't listen, so I'll stop flogging the dead horse.

Perhaps you don't know what information is, in science?  What do you think it means?

If you knew, you would not claim that mutations produce new information...

By the way, the main founder of information science was a Creationist - Dr. Werner Gitt.  I recommend you to read his book, "In The Beginning Was Information".

Every new mutation in a population, damages existing genetic information.  Most of this damage is either harmless or harmful.  Occasionally, the damage produces characteristics that are beneficial, in specific circumstances (e.g. a bacterium, which, because of a mutation, now lacks an important enzyme, in a hospital situation is now benefited, because the lack of that enzyme makes it immune to some antibiotics).

 

[The Barbarian]

27 minutes ago, David1701 said:

I've already answered you about day one, day two, etc., in Genesis 1. 

I've pointed out the logical errors you made in those assumptions.   You won't listen, so I'll stop flogging the dead horse.

Perhaps you don't know what "information" means in science.   What do you think it means?

28 minutes ago, David1701 said:

Perhaps you don't know what information is, in science?  

I did work on that in graduate school.  Yes, I know what it is.   The point is that you don't seem to know what it is.   Since you declined to answer, I'll assume you don't know what it means.  

Information can be quantified as follows. If ? is the set of all messages {x₁, ..., x_n} that X could be, and p(x) is the probability of some x ∈ X {\displaystyle x\in \mathbb {X} } , then the entropy, H, of X is defined:^[9

Where p(x) is the frequency of that allele in the population.

Let's take a very simple example, so you can see how it works.   Suppose there's a population of organisms, with two different alleles at a certain gene locus, each with a frequency of 0.5.    What is the information for that gene?   It's   about 0.30.    Now suppose that a mutation occurs at this locus and it eventually increases in the population until each allele has a frequency of about 0.333.

What did this mutation do to the information?

Now, it's about 0.477, an increase.   Every new mutation in a population increases information.   That's how it works.

Information is the uncertainty as to the allele in a sample, until you determine what the allele is.   If there's only one allele in the population, the uncertainty is 0 (you already know what it is).  And therefore the information for that gene is 0.   If there are two, the uncertainty is now greater than 0, and if there are three, the uncertainty increases, with the information increasing thereby.

46 minutes ago, David1701 said:

By the way, the main founder of information science was a Creationist - Dr. Werner Gitt. 

No, you got that wrong, too.   Information theory is older than that.    In 1948, Claude Shannon published A Mathematical Theory of Communication which is the foundation of information theory.  Interestingly, he first applied the theory to biology.   

Claude Shannon: Biologist

The Founder of Information Theory Used Biology to Formulate the Channel Capacity

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1538977/

 

Shannon's  theory today allows the internet to function, and lets people communicate with spacecraft over billions of kilometers of space with very low-powered radios.

 

Without Claude Shannon's information theory there would have been no internet

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/22/shannon-information-theory

 

Gitt's ideas don't work, and so are not used by engineers where information theory applies.   Here's why:

 

Where Gitt Goes Wrong

A striking contradiction is readily apparent in Gitt's thinking- he holds that his view of information is an extension of Shannon, even while he rejects the underpinnings of Shannon's work. Contrast Gitt's words

(4) No information can exist in purely statistical processes.

and

Theorem 3: Since Shannon's definition of information relates exclusively to the statistical relationship of chains of symbols and completely ignores their semantic aspect, this concept of information is wholly unsuitable for the evaluation of chains of symbols conveying a meaning.

with Shannon's statement in his key 1948 paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.

It becomes very difficult to see how he has provided an extension to Shannon, who purposely modeled information sources as producing random sequences of symbols (see the article Classical Information Theory for further information). It would be more proper to state that Gitt offers at best a restriction of Shannon, and at worst, an outright contradiction.

In SC2 Gitt notes that Chaitin showed randomness cannot be proven (see Chaitin's article "Randomness and Mathematical Proof"), and that the cause of a string of symbols must be therefore be known to determine information is present; yet in SC1 he relies on discerning the "ulterior intention at the semantic, pragmatic and apobetic levels." In other words, Gitt allows himself to make guesses about the intelligence and purpose behind a source of a series of symbols, even though he doesn't know whether the source of the symbols is random. Gitt is trying to have it both ways here. He wants to assert that the genome fits his strictly non-random definition of information, even after acknowledging that randomness cannot be proven.

(There is a deeper problem here, in that Chaitin is discussing algorithmic randomness and not statistical randomness. Algorithmic randomness for a given string depends on the selection of reference computer – see Algorithmic Information Theory. Chaitin shows that you can’t prove a string is uncompressible or algorithmically random on a given reference computer. Now a string may be laden with meaning yet algorithmically random on a given computer. It may also be meaningless yet highly compressible. Statistical randomness is a different concept, as long as we stick with finite-length strings. While it is possible to compare use statistical tests on long strings, there are classes of deterministic programs called Pseudo-Random Number Generators or PRNGs, of great importance to cryptography, that meet statistical tests for randomness. In other words, neither type of randomness can be proven, but Gitt appears to be confusing the two types of randomness.)

Gitt describes his principles as "empirical", yet the data is not provided to back this up. Similarly, he proposes fourteen "theorems", yet fails to demonstrate them. Shannon, in contrast, offers the math to back up his theorems. It is difficult to see how Gitt's "empirical principles" and "theorems" are anything but arbitrary assertions.

Neither do we see a working measure for meaning (a yet-unsolved problem Shannon wisely avoided). Since Gitt can't define what meaning is sufficiently to measure it, his ideas don't amount to much more than arm-waving.

By asserting that data must have an intelligent source to be considered information, and by assuming genomic sequences are information fitting that definition, Gitt defines into existence an intelligent source for the genome without going to the trouble of checking whether one was actually there. This is circular reasoning.

If we use a semantic definition for information, we cannot assume that data found in nature is information. We cannot know a priori that it had an intelligent source. We cannot make the data have semantic meaning or intelligent purpose by simply defining it so.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/gitt.html#Wrong

If Gitt's idea were workable, scientist and engineers would use them, regardless of who disapproved.   But they don't work.  So even YE creationist engineers, working with communications, use Shannon's theory, not Gitt's ideas.

56 minutes ago, David1701 said:

Every new mutation in a population, damages existing genetic information.

As you now realize, it adds to information.   That realization is what makes it possible to send electronic messages with as little uncertainty as you desire.  

 

 

[Tristen]

On 8/23/2020 at 12:36 PM, The Barbarian said:

On 8/23/2020 at 11:39 AM, Tristen said:

None of these quotes is technically incorrect (or "wrong"). The usual response is that speciation is a very slow process that occurs over generations (which is fair). Nevertheless, none of these quotes is related to the 'fixity of species' concept.

They are all wrong.   There are a number of observed speciations in the literature.

Well - I'd be happy to look at any "literature" you think supports your, as yet, Unsupported Assertion that they are "wrong".

Meanwhile - my original point stands. To quote myself, "none of these quotes is related to the 'fixity of species' concept"

 

On 8/23/2020 at 12:36 PM, The Barbarian said:

On 8/23/2020 at 11:39 AM, Tristen said:

He reconciled this to Genesis, not by claiming the days were symbolic, but by claiming the days before the sun (day 4) were "very, very different" to subsequent days.

No, that's wrong, too.  

In Augustine’s view, God creates all things simultaneously, and the 7-day construct in Genesis 1 is an accommodation in which “the Scriptural style comes down to the level of little ones and adjusts itself to their capacity.” Specifically, he affirms that the ordering of Genesis is not according to temporal sequence but rather the ordering of angelic knowledge.

 Thus, Augustine not only distinguished the days of Genesis 1 from ordinary 24-hour days, he also distinguished God’s initial creative act from his subsequent activity in creation:

When we reflect upon the first establishment of creatures in the works of God from which he rested on the seventh day, we should not think either of those days as being like these ones governed by the sun, nor of that working as resembling the way God now works in time; but we should reflect rather upon the work from which times began, the work of making all things at once, simultaneously.

https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/09/did-augustine-read-genesis-1-literally/

One of the things I've found interesting about our conversation is that your sourced quotes include an interpretation of Augustine, along with a quote from Augustine. And while the associated interpretation disagrees with what I stated, the Augustine quotes don't actually disagree with what I stated. That means at best, the quote is ambiguous. However, I have provided Augustine quotes that are unambiguous - like Augustine claiming the primary interpretation of scripture should be non-allegorical, and that anyone who claims the earth is very old is "mistaken", and that his symbolic interpretations are "not in harmony with the words of scripture", but designed to make the scriptures easier to digest for those coming from a Greek philosophical background.

 

On 8/23/2020 at 12:36 PM, The Barbarian said:

On 8/23/2020 at 11:39 AM, Tristen said:

And by "new evidence" you mean new stories of the past that are explicitly designed to explain nature without God.

No, you got that wrong, too.   St. Augustine realized that (as St. Paul observed) that creation itself was an important source of information about God and His work.

On 8/23/2020 at 11:39 AM, Tristen said:

And by "scripture did not clearly state somethings", you mean something scripture stated in the clearest possible terms.

That would be putting words in St. Augustine's mouth.   Words he never said or wrote.    There is much that is true that is not clearly stated in scripture.

On 8/23/2020 at 11:39 AM, Tristen said:

And by "revise our understanding of those things" you mean we should dismiss the clearest understanding of scripture, and subject our interpretation of scripture to the authority of external, secular sources.

Again, that would be a misrepresentation of what St. Augustine wrote

Lol. These criticisms were of your presumptive interpretation of Augustine (i.e. when you claimed; "He argued that when scripture did not clearly state somethings, we should be willing, if new evidence comes to light, to revise our understanding of those things") - not against anything he actually said.

And even if Augustine did say these things, my criticism would be logically valid. I have no problem disagreeing with Augustine, or anyone, if their arguments are flawed.

 

On 8/23/2020 at 12:36 PM, The Barbarian said:

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,… and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7].”” -St. Augustine, “De Genesi ad Litteram” (“The Literal Meaning of Genesis”—an unfinished work)

He's talking to you.

Well - I have 9 years worth of formal scientific education and research experience. I'd be more than happy to compare my scientific credentials against either you or Augustine (as opposed to your logically fallacious, unsupported innuendo that I don't know what I'm talking about). But ultimately, that would only perpetuate the use of fallacy in this discussion; in this case, an Appeal to Expertise/Authority.

Furthermore, your statement here exemplifies one of the main problems with the debate. People on the secular side are so indoctrinated regarding their correctness and the supposed strength of their position, that they are comfortable resorting to fallacy rather than engage in rational argument. Because if you really had the knock-out punch that you think you have, you'd present that argument instead of using rhetorical devices; trying to ridicule opponents out of the conversation.

 

On 8/23/2020 at 12:36 PM, The Barbarian said:

And as you know, YE creationism was the invention of the Seventh-Day Adventists in the 20th century.    As late as the Scopes trial, almost all creationists were OE creationists.  Spurgeon, the Baptist evangelist, wrote about millions of years of history.    So did Billy Graham, who saw nothing in evolution that was inconsistent with God's word.   YE is a very modern revision of Genesis

This is an untruth promoted by Ronald Numbers in his 1992 book, "The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism". There are many examples among, for example, the early reformers (including Luther and Tyndale) who vehemently defended what they called "the plain sense of the scriptures".

Let me know how many explicit examples you need - because in my brief look, I've already found handfuls of examples representing every major period over church history. They may not have been called "YEC", but they all strongly, explicitly defended the historical interpretation of Genesis. For example, after Charles Lyell introduced the faith premise of long-ages into geology, those geologists who continued to interpret the facts in the light of Genesis were sometimes called "scriptural geologists". From the church fathers to Darwin, the overwhelming consensus was that Genesis should be interpreted historically (including Augustine).

If interested, two books, "The Great Turning Point" (Terry Mortenson) and "The Quest for the Historical Adam" (William Vandoodewaard) thoroughly debunk the attempted historical revisionism of (ex-Christian) Ronald Numbers.

 

[The Barbarian]

10 hours ago, Tristen said:

Well - I'd be happy to look at any "literature" you think supports your, as yet, Unsupported Assertion that they are "wrong".

DROSOPHILA MIRANDA, A NEW SPECIES

Th. Dobzhansky

Genetics  Volume 20: 377 – Jul 1, 1935

10 hours ago, Tristen said:

One of the things I've found interesting about our conversation is that your sourced quotes include an interpretation of Augustine, along with a quote from Augustine. And while the associated interpretation disagrees with what I stated, the Augustine quotes don't actually disagree with what I stated. That means at best, the quote is ambiguous.

They just don't support your claims.   But as you see, Augustine unambigously states that the "days" of Genesis are not at all like our 24 hours days.   Moreover, he puts a symbolic interpretation on them, not consistent with a period of time.

10 hours ago, Tristen said:

Furthermore, your statement here exemplifies one of the main problems with the debate. People on the secular side are so indoctrinated regarding their correctness and the supposed strength of their position, that they are comfortable resorting to fallacy rather than engage in rational argument.

Your statement here exemplifies one of the main problems with the debate. People on the YE creationist side are so indoctrinated regarding their correctness and the supposed strength of their position, that they are comfortable resorting to fallacy rather than engage in rational argument.   Because if you really had the knock-out punch that you think you have, you'd present that argument instead of using rhetorical devices; trying to ridicule opponents out of the conversation.

And as you know, YE creationism was the invention of the Seventh-Day Adventists in the 20th century.    As late as the Scopes trial, almost all creationists were OE creationists.  Spurgeon, the Baptist evangelist, wrote about millions of years of history.    So did Billy Graham, who saw nothing in evolution that was inconsistent with God's word.   YE is a very modern revision of Genesis

10 hours ago, Tristen said:

This is an untruth

Well, let's take a look...

Price was a member of the recently founded Seventh-day Adventist Church. This Protestant denomination traced its lineage back to a nineteenth-century Baptist preacher named William Miller who predicted that Jesus Christ’s second coming would occur on October 22, 1844.[4] After Miller’s promised day came and went without miraculous incident, many of his followers reorganized into new millenarian sects. Chief among the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventists was Ellen G. White. White claimed to experience divinely guided visions, including one that transported her back in time to the six days of creation. Consequently, she asserted, “Infidel geologists claim that the world is very much older than the Bible record makes it. They reject the Bible record, because of those things which are to them evidences from the earth itself, that the world has existed tens of thousands of years…I have been shown that without Bible history, geology can prove nothing.”[5] Since White’s visions seemed to corroborate a literal reading of the Genesis account, Seventh-day Adventists were left with little room to contemplate the more flexible day-age or gap theories.

...

In the 1950s, an evangelical theologian in training named John C. Whitcomb took inspiration from Price when writing his dissertation, “The Genesis Flood.”[9] To turn this work into a manuscript, he partnered with engineering professor Henry M. Morris.

...

As a foundational text of the new “creation science,” The Genesis Flood reached an international audience. One reader was a young Australian Christian named Ken Ham. In a 2006 post on his ministry’s website, he revealed that reading The Genesis Flood directly inspired him to embrace young Earth creationism. The next year, he opened his own Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky which clinical ethicist John Lynch describes as an “embodied conversion narrative” meant to reinforce the faith of young Earth Creationists while “Creating the tension and dissonance that will lead to a purging of an old identity” for skeptics of creation science.[12] It is not difficult to identify continuity between Ham’s strategy and Price’s from nearly a century earlier. For decades, in fact, Ham has compared the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens to the “fountains of the great deep [breaking] up” before the great flood in Genesis. For Ham, like for Price, the deluge persists as a rigid data point.

https://activisthistory.com/2017/06/30/lost-in-the-flood-young-earth-creationism-from-george-mccready-price-to-ken-ham/

Unable to call any of his expert witnesses to testify for the defense, Darrow made the highly unusual decision to call prosecutor William Jennings Bryan to testify. Surprisingly—and against the advice of his colleagues—Bryan agreed to do so. Once again, the judge inexplicably ordered the jury to leave during the testimony.

Darrow questioned Bryan on various biblical details, including whether he thought the Earth had been created in six days. Bryan responded that he didn't believe it was actually six 24-hour days.

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-scopes-trial-1779247

 

 "But if you will look in the first chapter of Genesis, you will see there more particularly set forth that peculiar operation of power upon the universe which was put forth by the Holy Spirit; you will then discover what was his special work. In Ge 1:2, we read, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” We do not know how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God.

C.H. Spurgeon sermon number 30,  "The Power of the Holy Ghost." ca. 1880

I don’t think that there’s any conflict at all between science today and the scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we’ve tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren’t meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. … whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God. 

Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man, 1997. p. 72-74

It's all very well-documented.   Notice that Graham was willing to accept scientific evidence for the age of the Earth, because he was focused on the message of Scripture, redemption.   He realized that the Bible was not intended to teach science.   So he had no trouble accepting God's creation as it is.

  The opinion of other writers notwithstanding.   These men believed what they said they did.   As you know,St. Augustine thought the world was a few thousand years old, because that was what scientific evidence indicated at the time.  But he also suggested that if new facts come up, we should be willing to revise our ideas.   So by the 1800s, most creationists were OE creationists because the evidence so indicated.

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by The Barbarian

[The Barbarian]

Creationists evolving?

+edited out video

They need to be first approved in the video section before posting in the regular forums.