Creationist Confusion

Originally posted by saint4God
I'm 2 classes away from my Bachelor's of Science degree in Biology with a concentration in Genetics. After that, grad school! Now, gotta see how this would work since I also work a full time job.

Happy for you.. hope you can balance everything okay.

Still, degree or not, it's not gonna be enough is it?

Enough for what? To disprove evolution? To prove the planet was made in seven days? To convince people religion should be taught in science? I'm not sure what point you are making with this.

Nosiree, peeps will now want me to be a PHD.

Yes. Your family will be very proud.

Well not to worry, we had the distinguished honor of having one here on this thread (mattison0922)

PHD in what? I do not know who that is.

Originally posted by riley
Happy for you.. hope you can balance everything okay.

Thank you . Me too, but we'll see how it goes one day at a time. Who knows what will happen tomorrow.

Originally posted by riley
Enough for what? To disprove evolution? To prove the planet was made in seven days? To convince people religion should be taught in science? I'm not sure what point you are making with this.

It seems to me the argument that's being made is non-evolutionists are uneducated buffoons. This is not the case and I'll start with me if necessary, though I'd say there are many many many more people who have a greater knowledge and experience base in which to draw.

Originally posted by riley
Yes. Your family will be very proud.

I don't think a degree is reason to be proud, nor being a CEO, or making a masterpiece, etc. On the other hand, knowing that you've done some good in the world, now there's something to smile about. Want a place to start? Here ya go:

Provide food, water and medical needs for a child who is needing the help.

Originally posted by riley
PHD in what? I do not know who that is.

I believe it was in Micro-biology, but it could be in Bio-chemistry. My memory is failing me but recall it was a biology concentration. Check back on this thread and the one I've linked if interested. He's got some great in-depth points and discussion I've yet to see solidly addressed.

Originally posted by saint4God
It seems to me the argument that's being made is non-evolutionists are uneducated buffoons.

That depends on what they have to say.. ID design I can appreciate why people believe in it.. despite being an athiest. There is no physical evidence to prove it.. however there is nothing to disprove it either. This of course brings in my space/time argument which has nothing to do with the evolution process anyway.. but when someone says things like "We don't come from chimanzees!".. or claims we co-existed and killed off the dinosaurs; I might be inclined to think that ALL their 'information' has come from religious propaganda.

This is not the case and I'll start with me if necessary, though I'd say there are many many many more people who have a greater knowledge and experience base in which to draw.

What level of creation do you believe in? Aboriginesis [I know I probably spell it wrong] creation, universe creation [aboriginis is in the design] or Adam an Eve minus human evolution? There are many types.

Originally posted by riley
I don't think a degree is reason to be proud, nor being a CEO, or making a masterpiece, etc. On the other hand, knowing that you've done some good in the world, now there's something to smile about. Want a place to start? Here ya go:

Provide food, water and medical needs for a child who is needing the help.

I've already started thankyou.. I will do more in time but will probably start closer to home.

I believe it was in Micro-biology, but it could be in Bio-chemistry. My memory is failing me but recall it was a biology concentration. Check back on this thread and the one I've linked if interested. He's got some great in-depth points and discussion I've yet to see solidly addressed.

I will take a look at a later stage.. it's a long thread.

Originally posted by riley
What level of creation do you believe in? Aboriginesis [I know I probably spell it wrong] creation, universe creation [aboriginis is in the design] or Adam an Eve minus human evolution? There are many types.

Hey hey! Let's talk. Candidly I knew more about what I don't believe and doesn't fit than what does. Perhaps I have something to learn here. Perhaps I can toss out what I do believe and you can classify for me if it fits into a catagory:

Biodiversity is a necessarily and integral part of an ecosystem. The interconnectivity and interdependency of life makes it therefore a requirement to have all pieces of the puzzle together before the word "go". I believe Gregory Mendel had it right in saying there is variation and it can be predicted. I believe that genomes have limits as to the product they can produce dependent on the nitrogenous bases contained within it: Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine (and Uracil in the transcription/translation process). I believe mutations cause sterility or are swiftly selection against. I believe mutations cannot happen 'slowly over time' and 'through multiple generations'. Thoroughbreeding is not evolution, rather selection within the viable spectrum of existing DNA. I believe in order for all this to happen, there must be a Creator to put it all together. How God did it? I don't know, but I knew He used components of the earth as He said because they are the building blocks of our structure. Carbon, Dihydrogen Oxide, Carbon Dioxide. But how did he do it? Gotta look smaller than in ecology, in an electron microscope to see it.

Originally posted by riley
I've already started thankyou.. I will do more in time but will probably start closer to home.

Cool ^_^. It's so refreshing to hearing people are involved and per our previous conversations, know that you're there for your friends when they need you, which is also a big help.

Originally posted by riley
I will take a look at a later stage.. it's a long thread.

It is! And honestly tiring, but certainly possible when looked over in bite-sized pieces.

I appreciate your asking what I believe, it's a rare thing to hear someone take interest in what others have concluded.

[edit on 8-9-2005 by saint4God]

Credit for these lucid refutations of creationism (ID) goes to Phil Porvaznik. Face it, ID is as much a pseudoscience as phrenology. Without even considering the manifold evidences in geosciences, evolution is proven vis-a'-vis biosciences on many levels.

The biological evidence for evolution fits into several categories: the unique universal phylogenetic tree of life, transitional forms and the fossil record, past history of vestiges / atavisms, evidence from embryology, from biogeography and global distribution of species, from anatomical and molecular paralogy / analogy, the molecular sequence evidence (cytochrome-c and pseudogenes), etc. Here are a few dozen questions taken from a summary, that six-day creationists, or any creationist who opposes macroevolution and "common descent" would find difficult to answer. Again, to answer "God did it" (although ultimately, theistic evolutionists agree) would not be a scientific explanation.



mod edit of lengthy cut and paste

[edit on 14-9-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

Originally posted by Aeon10101110
Credit for these lucid refutations of creationism (ID) goes to Phil Porvaznik. Face it, ID is as much a pseudoscience as phrenology. Without even considering the manifold evidences in geosciences, evolution is proven vis-a'-vis biosciences on many levels.

The biological evidence for evolution fits into several categories: the unique universal phylogenetic tree of life, transitional forms and the fossil record, past history of vestiges / atavisms, evidence from embryology, from biogeography and global distribution of species, from anatomical and molecular paralogy / analogy, the molecular sequence evidence (cytochrome-c and pseudogenes), etc. Here are a few dozen questions taken from a summary, that six-day creationists, or any creationist who opposes macroevolution and "common descent" would find difficult to answer. Again, to answer "God did it" (although ultimately, theistic evolutionists agree) would not be a scientific explanation.



mod edit of lengthy cut and paste

[edit on 14-9-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

First off -- all the examples you cite to "prove" evolution DON'T. They could just as easily be turned around to prove Creationism and do so more convincingly.

Transitional life forms in the fossil record or otherwise? There aren't any, and scientists aren't even looking for them anymore. Darwin spent many long years searching for just one fossil that would show a transition -- and finally concluded he'd not be able to find it. Scientists have pretty much dropped the use of gradulalism as the explanation to origins. Instead, Sagon and his cohort Jay Gould and others champion the theory of punctuated equilibrium y to explain origins. Fact is, nobody really expects to EVER discover any so-called transitional life forms. In the past when such have been claimed to have been "found" -- they turn out to be not what they seemed or, in most cases, outright hoaxes.

And certainly with the literally billions of life forms on Planet Earth -- (counting all the bugs, plants and animals) -- there would be evidence of SOMETHING that was "transitioning" -- either in nature around us or in the fossil record. But, no. Everything is complete, finished. We see no scales turning into feathers or plants growing brains and eyes, or fish whose fins are turning into legs and whose gills are turning into lungs. True, there are many weird and strange creatures -- like bats, platypuses, euglenas, on and on, but these creatures are what they are -- just strange creatures. If the bat were, for example, an example of a bird "turning into" a squirrel, well it's just not going to happen. There is nothing in the bat that's transitioning. It's just a bat. You get my drift? And it will still BE a bat in 1 million years (if we're all still here, which I don't think we WILL be.) Fact is, God has an amazing imagination and he's not limited in what he creates, makes things that frustrate the person trying to organize creatures into categories.

Creatures. Get it, creatures (something created)?

Fact is there are things that change and things that don't. Evolution is the science of documenting change. Well, they're still looking for just one thing to document. This sounds more like a religion to me than science -- i.e. desperately searching for 100 years for just one example of change? The more they look, the more the evolutionists keep running into more evidence and proof that the change they are looking for doesn't exist. No wonder most of them have given up ever finding it, and very few are seriously looking.

Just like nobody's seriously trying to duplicate in the laboratory what they claimed happened in nature by accident -- i.e. the creation of life itself. Rather, they are tinkering with life, with the stuff of life, trying to manipulate it and understand it. But they think this happened by accident, that dead matter can produce life. If this is not religion, what is? It certainly is ascribing god-like attributes to matter (that it's self-existent, capable of producing life from itself, and that it can form itself into all lifeforms).

And embryology does not prove evolution. It proves only embryology. Embryology takes place in a period of months. Evolution takes place over eons of time. So embryology hardly is proof of evolution -- to the contrary. Creationism claims things are as they are, and life comes from life. And speaking of embryos, which DID come first -- the embryo or the parent? Answer: The parent (so he could take care of the baby, and because life comes from life). It's a scientific fact. Check it out. I'm not lying. And which parent came first -- the male or the female? since they were both supposedly evolving to the point where they could finally mate and produce offspring.

There is no proof for evolution. ALL the proof is piled in favor of creationism. No matter what example you use to try to "prove" evolution, its reverse much more solidly proves Creationism.

Evolution is just wishful thinking by people who don't want God looking over their shoulder, expecting things from them, and waiting at the end of their life to judge them. Evolution requires extreme, even fanatical, devotion to its ideology. I mean, what are you going to believe -- evolution or your lying eyes?





[edit on 29-9-2005 by resistance]

[edit on 29-9-2005 by resistance]

[edit on 29-9-2005 by resistance]

[edit on 29-9-2005 by resistance]

resistance - you provide no proof for any of your faith-based assertions. For one, do you even have a testable hypothesis? Outside of your lack of such a formulation, your supposed "theory" of intelligent design is on very shaky ground at the outset. First, if there is a design, you MUST PROVE a designer. Otherwise, your assumption (yes, it is merely conjecture) has utterly no merit. Second, you need to prove that the designer is intelligent - are you prepared in any way to prove the conjectured higher intelligence?

Consider the eye, for one small example. The front of the retina of course has light sensitive rod and cone structures. But it also contains the neurons that relay visual stimulus, converging at an exit point that forms a blind spot. Basically, the retina is inside-out. Would an intelligent designer of a video camera create such a flawed construct?

Many other lines of evidence such as vestigal organs, like the human tail bone or appendix, are indicative of gradual processes at work - not instantaneous creation. For another example, why do dandelions make flowers and seeds despite the fact that they are useless for reproduction? The list goes on and on.

But where are the proofs for creationism, oh exuse me, intelligent design? And what are they? Certainly the residents of New Orleans and so many other Bible Belt cities are thinking of how intelligent the design is!!!

Once again I ask for your hypothesis. What tests do you propose? Are you willing to subject your ideas for peer review and if proven false, what are the implications? But if you say that there is no way in can prove false, you're not talking science, but faith.

And resistance - where in the world did you get your information that there are no transitional fossil forms?!?

Who spoon-fed you the information about Darwin, only for your sickening regurgitation of it in front of us? Your lack of research is glaring. But for your edification, I provide some transitional human forms:



Some hominid species: (A) Pan troglodytes, modern chimpanzee; (B) Australopithecus africanus, 2.6 My; (C) Australopithecus africanus, 2.5 My; (D) Homo habilis, 1.9 My; (E) Homo habilis, 1.8 My; (F) Homo rudolfensis, 1.8 My; (G) primitive Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium, 1.75 My; (H) Homo ergaster (late H. erectus), 1.75 My; (I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y; (J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, 70,000 y; (K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, 60,000 y; (L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, 45,000 y; (M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon, 30,000 y; (N) modern Homo sapiens sapiens

Of course, there are many other transitional forms of animals throughout the fossil record. The layers of rock on Earth read like a book, a tome proving evolution.