The "evolution scientists are evil liars" bit is one I see used a lot. Good conspiracy theory, therefore fitting of ATS, but there is one giant hole in it that probably keeps most sane people from buying it.

What is the motive?

Do you people honestly think that thousands of modern biologists would sit in their basements, laughing maniacally, spending thousands of hours fabricating evidence to prove a theory?

On the contrary. Biology has advanced our knowledge of living systems immensely; improved human lifespan and life quality by a enormous degree, and certainly saved and lead to the production of, literally, billions of human lives. Even if Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc were a "product of evolutionism", which they most certainly were not, biology, and it's central pillar, evolutionary theory, has saved billions more than it has killed (and it has killed no one).

Consider what life would be like if medicine, vaccines, or farming, or ranching, had never been discovered. These are all, essentially, products of biology, and evolution theory, as alluded to above, is the central pillar of modern biology, and the two go hand in hand.

The "darwinism leads to social darwinism" bit is equivalent to leveling attacks against chemistry because knowledge of chemistry helped produce the Manhattan Project. Chemistry also lead to the production of fertilizers and the thousands of other chemicals that make our lives veritable heaven compared to that of our ancestors.

On the other hand, what has creationism done for anyone? Has it saved any lives? No... has it advanced our understanding of anything? No... it is a shrug of the shoulders, an "I dunno" dressed up in spirituality and ritual. It is anti-progress and a desperate attack on knowledge and science.

Generally, a rational secular mind wouldn't have too much of a problem with this. I don't care if someone happens to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. However, you can bet that if they attempted to subvert and attack real science I'd take issue. This is exactly the line that creationism and it's rich cousin ID have crossed.

So, to restate; exactly what benefit has creationism had on human society and civilization?

Originally posted by SlyCM
...Consider what life would be like if medicine, vaccines, or farming, or ranching, had never been discovered.

We had ALL of those before Darwin came up with his theory. Care to try again?

If you were REALLY that interesting in science, you would know that most of the scientific greats in the world (you know, the ones they talk about in history books) were almost all "creationists".

Originally posted by Demandred

and yes it is apart of the evolutionary theory because how else was life supposed to start?

[edit on 7-10-2008 by Demandred]

Read this and remember it:

Evolution is the study of the process by which living organisms develop and diversify from earlier forms of living organisms.

Evolution has nothing to do with how life began.

The scientific discipline that studies how life emerged from inanimate organic and inorganic matter is called Abiogenesis.

These are two distinctly different fields of scientific study just like Biology and Physics.

Originally posted by Demandred
sure i will just as soon as you give me something to reaserch ... like how evolution gave us so many wonderful things?

as far as i was aware science gave us those things not evolution, and evading the point that evolutionists still cant spontaniously create life from a primordial soup kinda kicks the legs out from under the whole evolution theory ..

Evolution hasn't given us anything. It's just the explanation of how biodiversity arose on the planet from single cell life. How life got started is the territory of abiogenesis, which is a totally different subject from evolution. It's being worked on by scientists, however, who aren't willing to accept the cop-out explanation of "god did it."

actually i have .. was yesterday reading up on this very point your not talking about the experiment that was done in Germany by any chance?

No, I'm not. It was done at the University of Chicago in the 1950's. And I'm glad you've been reading up on the subject, whereas I am a biology undergrad student and have been taught literally for hours on the subject and tested on it multiple times.

and yes it is apart of the evolutionary theory because how else was life supposed to start?

Again, that's not part of evolutionary theory. Evolution explains the diversity of life, not its origins.

[edit on 7-10-2008 by SamuraiDrifter]

What I find interesting is that once again creationists have an opportunity to defend their beliefs...

And once again all they can do is try to attack and discredit science and evolution.

I give that a fail.

Why don't we look at this differently.

Pretend that we know NOTHING about evolution, and get back to the original question.

What has creationism given to advance life and society on this planet?

For a theory/fact etc, to stand, it must stand ON ITS OWN and not because there are discrepancies in an alternate theory. Pointing out the wrongness of the alternate theory in NO WAY makes the one being argued about more correct.

Carry on.

Originally posted by juniperberry
Why don't we look at this differently.

Pretend that we know NOTHING about evolution, and get back to the original question.

What has creationism given to advance life and society on this planet?

For a theory/fact etc, to stand, it must stand ON ITS OWN and not because there are discrepancies in an alternate theory. Pointing out the wrongness of the alternate theory in NO WAY makes the one being argued about more correct.

Carry on.

how about morals and values, a sense of "community" where like minded people came together to create something they themselves couldnt have achieved alone.

which you could say was the foundation of modern day life where today people work together and create all the technology we see today