creationism, where is the evidence???!!! i see none

Originally posted by Xtrozero

Originally posted by AncientVoid
Yes you could say all that, and you could also say Santa created life, but without evidence or any logical reasoning behind it, it's not worth much. And no, the examples you gave aren't equally likely since some has more logic and reasoning behind it.
[edit on 16-1-2008 by AncientVoid]

Where is the logic in the OPs title? "where is the evidence?" That is my point in that there is no evidence to any hypothesis on the creation of life.

ummm no evidence to support evolution? theres plenty.

Also who we call God could just as easily be the first life that formed from the big bang. It seems people have no problem with "aliens" seeding the universe with zero evidence but they have a hard time with God seeding the universe.

and that just proves how absolutely ridiculous the whole concept is these days.

I’m not that religious but I can see that faith plays into both of these and they both are so similar that it is almost hypocritical to say one can be true and not the other.

this thread is about providing evidence - i thought you read the title

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by AshleyD

 

AshleyD,

Once again, you post something that makes no sense.

Oh, by the way, I am not 'fighting'...that is YOUR word.

If I had a choice of beating my head against a wall, or stopping the beating...I choose stopping.


Only the OP has the right and authority to steer this thread back to where it belongs.

ok only new to this but i spose its end of arguement - ashley admitted that there was no evidence so theres not much else to argue regarding this topic.
i now remain more perplexed than eva about why people throw their whole lives in for a belief that has no proof?
oh well if it makes you happy whos to complain
evolution wins another battle

Originally posted by mamasita
evolution wins another battle

Yeah, after the 4, 734, 428th straight win it becomes a bit boring.

just a little something.....

i can go about this all day with proof of evolution.....and yet not one single shred for creation.....

Evolution on Speed!

www.youtube.com...

Just for the heck of it we need to realize that maybe both are real. Why not? I actually posted in another area abit about my theory but it can become complicated so I am just going to sit here and state a fact.

Fact#1 We can create DNA from bones, to create a living creature. We only learned how to do this over the past 30 years.

Fact #2 Cloning, we have only learned to do this over the past 30 - 40 years.

Fact #3 Artificial insemination is now available, we only learned this over the past 30 years.

Fact #4 God created man from the earth. When we die we are in the earth, we become one with it. Could not someone with the knowledge have taken DNA from apeman and created a new human by using there DNA? We can now. Why not then? (God was more superior then us)

Fact #5 Mary became pregnant by God yet was a virgin. Can we not now do this? Yes we can. Why couldnt have God done it back then? He could have.

Use facts open your mind up to our technology now and realize what happened back then is a mystery that is easily solved.

Hilda

The only thing I can say in reference to the heading of this thread, without going into detail, is to look around you, God's greatest evangelsit is NATURE.

Once again, a non-believers presuppositions will not allow them to become Believers based on "evidence". No one has ever become a Believer because they were convinced of such by arguments. God alone calls people to faith in Him, no one ever wakes up one day and says...."Ya know, I'm going to trust in God today as my Lord!"

So the question should be "Why is a non-believer seeking evidence of creation?" Given that no amount of evidence will convince them that God is the Creator because their presuppositions, that there is no God, nothing metaphysical nor spiritual, will allow them to Believe. Ask a non-believer what it would take for them to Believe? Maybe it would take Jesus Himself appearing before them. Yet if that did happen would they really become Believers or just attribute that to some type of hallucination or a very realistic dream? It would most likely be the latter, why?? Because their presuppositions hold that there is no God, nothing metaphysical thus Jesus could not really appear to them so it MUST be something else.

The presuppositions of the Believer hold that God is the Creator hence the Believer knows that their knowledge comes from God and because of this they observe the world (evidence) around them. Christian apologists should just stick with seeking to correct heresy within the body of Believers because no one can convince a non-believer to become a Believer until God calls that person.

The better question to ask is, "*IF* God were the Creator, what should I observe or what evidence should I see?" Then the non-believer must define how they know what "evidence" is and this must start by them explaining how, by empirical means, they gain knowledge through observation?

reply to post by SilverSmith


Silver, you are scaring me more than ever.

When you say ...correct heresy within the body of the Believer..." it is chilling. Heretics have been imprisoned, tortured and burned at the stake for much of Christianity's existence.

BTW, again you are confusing a person's valid, rational attempt to point out the multitude of inconsistencies that abound in 'creationism' with an attack on God. Many can believe in a higher power and still realize that the simplistic 'story' of biblical 'creation' is steeped in lore and oral tradition that was used for early Man to try to understand the natural world around them. If you believe in God, then shouldn't one put their 'god-given' intellect to better use?

Originally posted by weedwhacker
Once again, you post something that makes no sense.

No, it makes sense because the "problem" you are referring to is part of a skeptical argument known as the JEDP Hypothesis. I referred to it as nostalgic because the problem was brought up about 2-3 centuries ago and the "predicament" has been answered and debunked pretty thoroughly. Yet for some reason (possibly out of ignorance of the resolution), many still refer to this supposed problem. Just like some still think there have been sixteen crucified savior gods preceding Jesus or that the Bible teaches a flat earth. They're nothing more than urban legends being passed around uncritically because some are too lazy to look up the answers that were provided eons ago. It's the same with Genesis chapters one and two.

Originally posted by melatonin

In a way we don't yet understand?

True, just like we do not understand God yet. It is funny that we understand all the parts of physical life, but we cannot make life from these non-living parts even though it is abundant on earth in many forms. We can make oil or diamonds since we know all the parts that go into these non-living natural creations, but we can not create life…hmmmm

Not really. Again, one line of thinking depends on natural processes, processes we know exist. We know that basic elements form complex compounds. We know that organic compounds are all around us. Life depends on the natural compounds we see around us.

Yes we know them all and these are the same natural processes within Gods creation, but both fall back to were did the spark of life come from?



[edit on 16-1-2008 by Xtrozero]

Originally posted by mamasita
ummm no evidence to support evolution? theres plenty.

You are right in evolution did happen and we are still evolving, but it had to start somewhere and that my friend is the unproven mystery with no evidence.

this thread is about providing evidence - i thought you read the title

My point was there is no evidence to the origin of life, period, so just what can anyone provide for any hypothesis with none there?

Originally posted by Xtrozero
True, just like we do not understand God yet. It is funny that we understand all the parts of physical life, but we cannot make life from these non-living parts even though it is abundant on earth in many forms. We can make oil or diamonds since we know all the parts that go into these non-living natural creations, but we can not create life…hmmmm

Give us time, heh. We only identified DNA about 50 years ago. I don't think we do understand all the parts of life. However, we are making massive headway.

The issue is that we don't really know the exact pathway to the first basic organisms. We have the building blocks. We have simple organisms. We have lots of ideas of how that bridge might have been spanned. But such basic organisms don't fossilise. Thus, it will certainly be a difficult, but not impossible, effort to work it through.

Just like with most other aspects of nature, place your god in the gaps with peril

Yes we know them all and these are the same natural processes within Gods creation, but both fall back to were did the spark of life come from?

I think it was a natural consequence of the universe. You can place your magic anywhere you like, from abiogenesis to big-bang, to anywhere before. Magic's a bit like that, it has no constraints and is essentially a non-answer.

reply to post by Xtrozero


Xtrozero,

I think I know what you're talking about. The origin of life is an hypothesis, of course...I wasn't around back then either, so using what is known now, and working backwards, one can form an hypothesis.

These are knowledges, and disciplines, beyond my field of expertise. It involves elements of chemistry, amino acid development, cosmology and lots and lots of time for all of it to occur.

And, when we mention time...our Sun is considered to be a 'third generation' star. The Universe is, about, 13.7 Billion 'years' old...our Solar System is about 4.5 Billion 'years' old.

Fusion happened in the early 'birth' of the Universe...H to He and so on. It took a LONG time for stars to form, fuse and eventually Nova to spread the elements out to eventually coalesce into other stars (second generation) to repeat the process again...and, this is AFTER whatever forces were imparted in teh 'beginning' set the whole thing in motion.

Call it God...call it Vishnu...Call it Buddha... Doesn't matter what you call it, SOMETHING happened to get us to where we are now, in our perception of reality. This is what should boggle the mind...not that we were 'created' 6,000 years ago. NO, what is powerful is that we are insignificant in the larger scheme of things, and that is what drives people, what SCARES people to seek a simpler, easier to understand safety blanket...religion.

So, being scared, hugging a 'safety blanket' is fine...until the heads of whatever 'religion' is being embraced use their power against the people who blindly follow. This scenario has been repeated over and over in Human history, long before Christianity developed.

The ancient Egyptians...the Mayans...the Incas...and those are just a few. Even though the Greeks believed in multiple 'gods', at least they had a stable civilization and gave us much of the foundation that we rely on to this day. Too bad we aren't speaking Greek right now....we would have been better off, methinks.

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by SilverSmith

 

Silver, you are scaring me more than ever.

When you say ...correct heresy within the body of the Believer..." it is chilling. Heretics have been imprisoned, tortured and burned at the stake for much of Christianity's existence.

BTW, again you are confusing a person's valid, rational attempt to point out the multitude of inconsistencies that abound in 'creationism' with an attack on God. Many can believe in a higher power and still realize that the simplistic 'story' of biblical 'creation' is steeped in lore and oral tradition that was used for early Man to try to understand the natural world around them. If you believe in God, then shouldn't one put their 'god-given' intellect to better use?

You need to grasp "context". No where did I state anyone should be imprisoned, tortured or burned. I am speaking of unsound doctrine being taught within the body of Christ and that then being rebuked and corrected. For example, many churches teach that water baptism is required for salvation, it is what removes our sin. This is heresy and unbiblical and the apologist should contend with this and not with seeking to convince unbelievers they need to be saved.

Genesis was written to contradict the pagan beliefs that Gods people had adopted. The creation stories were based on gods creating from material already present or from animals or planets. God states that He created all there is from His spoken word and that He alone is God and there are no others before Him. It was not intended nor written for early man to grasp or understand the natural world around him.

Now again, you being an empiricist, please tell me which of your senses told you what "evidence" means? How did you come to learn that word?

Originally posted by melatonin
Magic's a bit like that, it has no constraints and is essentially a non-answer.

There is no such thing as magic for magic is only magic to someone who doesn’t understand how something works. God would not be magic, but he would be a basic fundamental of the universe that we do not understand. I would think that most would really hope there was intelligent design to this all, for if it is not then we are going to be one lonely race.

The reason why I say this is because to have life happen by chance and then evolve from simple organisms into an intelligent space fairing species we would see astronomical odds for this to happen. So we cannot have it both ways in believing we not alone and also believe we are all here by a freak accident of nature.

Originally posted by weedwhacker
Call it God...call it Vishnu...Call it Buddha... Doesn't matter what you call it, SOMETHING happened to get us to where we are now, in our perception of reality. This is what should boggle the mind...not that we were 'created' 6,000 years ago. NO, what is powerful is that we are insignificant in the larger scheme of things, and that is what drives people, what SCARES people to seek a simpler, easier to understand safety blanket...religion.

Actually I feel we get hung up on metaphors and symbolism when we can have it both ways. To me Adam and Eve were not blinked into existence 6000 years ago, but were the point in our evolution that man gained self-awareness and a soul. It is all so simple to see that when the evil apple of intelligence was bitten we were no longer a mindless innocent animal that didn't know the difference of good or evil, but only instinct. That world of innocence we called the Garden of Eden was forever gone as we left that era of when were just beasts, and we even put on clothes due to our new found self-awareness.

This all screams evolution by intelligent design to me.

Originally posted by Xtrozero
God would not be magic, but he would be a basic fundamental of the universe that we do not understand.

So essentially god would have a laboratory, he would physically manipulate biochemicals to produce the first organisms? A bit like a divine lab rat? Then travel between dimensions, seeding planets to evolve humans for company or something?

S'pose he could be like a kid with an ant farm. OK. If it floats ya boat.

The reason why I say this is because to have life happen by chance and then evolve from simple organisms into an intelligent space fairing species we would see astronomical odds for this to happen. So we cannot have it both ways in believing we not alone and also believe we are all here by a freak accident of nature.

Firstly, I doubt you can actually calculate such odds, so it's really just an argument from incredulity. Secondly, I don't think it would be a 'freak accident of nature'. It would chemistry and biology. Of course, it would be undirected by the hands of the divine biochemist.

However, even if it was just a freak accident with astronomical odds, we are talking about a universe with an astronomical number of planets and a quite lengthy period of time for billions of simultaneous trails and errors.

Originally posted by melatonin
However, even if it was just a freak accident with astronomical odds, we are talking about a universe with an astronomical number of planets and a quite lengthy period of time for billions of simultaneous trails and errors.

lol ok so what 2 per galaxy? Still a very lonely place...

Hawkins stated… Here

It is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single cell organisms, will live on, if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions. There is support for the view that intelligence, was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution. It took a very long time, two and a half billion years, to go from single cells to multi-cell beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available, before the Sun blows up. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis, that the probability for life to develop intelligence, is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life. Another way, in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage, would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. We have just observed the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter. It produced a series of enormous fireballs. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out. It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

Richard Dawkins ran into God one day and told him that since he was so smart he did'nt need Him anymore. So God asked him if he could make a man out of dirt. Richard Dawkins said "sure I can. I am a scientist." And he scooped up some dirt and started on his way. But God stopped him and said,"get your own dirt."

Originally posted by dakota jim
Richard Dawkins ran into God one day and told him that since he was so smart he did'nt need Him anymore. So God asked him if he could make a man out of dirt. Richard Dawkins said "sure I can. I am a scientist." And he scooped up some dirt and started on his way. But God stopped him and said,"get your own dirt."

OK, prove to me that that really happened. Let's call or write to Richard Dawkins tomorrow, because if it didn't, then you 'got some splainin' to do!'

Do you know the one about the evangelical that runs down the street past two men while shouting about the rapture? One guy turns to his buddy and says, 'Thank god I'm an atheist!'.