Creation vs. Evolution

[gary-ramey]

Quote:
Originally Posted by ce4jesus
I think you're missing the point. If God created the world with the roadmap on how to live and build a relationship with Him, you fault him because you find evidence his world looks older than you thought? How old does petrified wood from the 1978 eruption of Mt. St. Helens date using radiometric dating? Millions of years old. Why?

I don't know, I haven't heard that before. Could you provide a citation? (Of course you won't...you never have). There hundreds of ways that the age of the Earth is determined other than radiocarbon dating, though and they all agree - 4.5 billion years.

How Does Wood Petrify Sorry couldn't find the popular science link.

Quote:
I've heard one theory put forward that states the creation account in Genesis is modern man. If God exists outside of time and "a day is to a 1000 years as a 1000 years is to a day" then no one has to subscribe to a literal 6 days in the Genesis Creation account.

That's not a theory. That's one person rationalizing.

Not one person's rationale, views from religious scholars. Oh that's right, you guys don't even recognize PHD's in your own scientific community that disagree with you. My bad.

Quote:
Regardless, some of you buy into every syllable published in a scientfic rag long before it ahs been tested as fact. Only later do you find out what you learned wasn't what you thought. Was science trying to fool you? Was the author being dishonest? Likewise, the notion God is trying to fool you is laughable.

If it's in a "scientific rag" it has at least been tested in some way.

Please, tell me, if the world is actually 6 thousand years old and EVERY independent method we have shows it to be 4.5 billion years, what is your explanation? Saying something is "laughable" doesn't actually make it true.

I've already told you my explanation. Genesis 1:1 "God created the Heavens and the Earth" Now, how he did that exactly isn't stated. Big Bang? I don't necessarily subscribe to the young-earth idea, but I don't discount it either. There is some evidence, at least, to suggest the Earth might not be as old as we think...ie the salt content of the Earth's Oceans. At the current rate of Salination of the Oceans as measured, if the Earth were older than 20,000 years, the Earth's Oceans would be like the dead sea. Finally I'll throw a personal observation out and you tell me why you think it hasn't happened sooner. I've observed several invasive species in my life that have invaded the Southern US from Mexico. It was a species of ant. A combination of red and black ant they were extremely aggressive. As a matter of fact they wiped out the indiginous red and black ants in the area. These ants were native to Mexico and the American SouthWest. I noticed them in Colorado years before noticing them in my home state of Tennessee. I realize that man, and modern travel, has sped this process up somewhat but if these ants have been around for millions of years as advertised...why did I witness this invasion? Shouldn't that have already occurred naturally about 500,000 years ago? I mean, if you start in Brazil and migrate up (somewhat similar pattern of migration as the Killer Bees) It doesn't take long for an aggressive species to spread. The point is these ants weren't in the area I grew up in and it wasn't until 10 years after I left that I noticed them there. BTW, the argument that they escaped my attention won't work because I used to be fascinated with ants growing up and would often collect them. So evidence for a younger earth than 4.5 billion is there, it just takes questioning the old model examining the totality of the evidence.

 

[Thalassamania]

Evolution is a reality, I think that the line in the sand that has been drawn between God and science is ridiculous. I cannot understand how one cannot support the other. The Bible leaves so very many questions unanswered and doesn't say that science cannot be involved. At the same time the idea of there not being a "creator" has been shot down in debate after debate. I used to be a devout Christian, I have too many questions to say I am devout now, but during that time I researched transcripts of Aethiest vs Agnostics/Christian debates, and never once did the aethiests win.

In fact, the one question that the aethiests could not answer was based on Aquinas's 5 proofs of God. In my limited research, no scientist can solidly answer these proofs Religion B2: Aquinas's Five Proofs. Having a "Creator" makes more sense than an infinite regression of creation and evolution.

1. The argument of the unmoved mover (ex motu).
   • Some things are moved.
   • Everything that is moved is moved by a mover.
   • An infinite regress of movers is impossible.
   • Therefore, there is an unmoved mover from whom all motion proceeds.
   • This mover is what we call God.
2. The argument of the first cause (ex causa).
   • Some things are caused.
   • Everything that is caused is caused by something else.
   • An infinite regress of causation is impossible.
   • Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all caused things.
   • This causer is what we call God.
3. The argument of contingency (ex contingentia).
   • Many things in the universe may either exist or not exist. Such things are called contingent beings.
   • It is impossible for everything in the universe to be contingent, as something can't come of nothing, and if traced back eventually there must have been one thing from which all others have occurred.
   • Therefore, there must be a necessary being whose existence is not contingent on any other being(s).
   • This being is what we call God.
4. The argument of degree. (ex gradu).
   • Various perfections may be found in varying degrees throughout the universe.
   • These degrees of perfections assume the existence of the perfections themselves.
   • The pinnacle of perfection, from which lesser degrees of perfection derive, is what we call God.
5. The argument of "design" (ex fine).
   • All natural bodies in the world act for ends.
   • These objects are in themselves unintelligent.
   • To act for ends is characteristic of intelligence.
   • Therefore, there exists an intelligent being which guides all natural bodies to their ends.
   • This being we call God.

All is semantics and goboldy-goop, these "proofs" were popular back in the thirteenth century and represented the height of the now discredited scholastic philosophers. Read it for yourself, you can make it mean anything you want to even if you are willing to grant the assumptions.

For those of you who were not Philosophy majors: Scholasticism was the dominant form of theology and philosophy in the High Middle Ages, in Europe, particularly in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. It was both a method and a system which aimed to reconcile the Christian theology of the Church Fathers with the Greek philosophy of Aristotle and his commentators. During the Renaissance, the deductive and a priori methods of scholasticism were overshadowed by the inductive reasoning of modern science, and its theological basis fell to humanism.

I've already told you my explanation. Genesis 1:1 "God created the Heavens and the Earth" Now, how he did that exactly isn't stated. Big Bang? ...

Next your gonna cite Mother Goose and Winne the Pooh.

 

[AXL72]

OMG...thanks to CIVILENGINEER4JEEBUS, I just had an epiphany!!! I now believe in God. You bloody atheists....shame on all of you!!!


Here is why

I just breathed in some Oxygen. My body converted it to Carbon Dioxide.

I just took out my handy dandy carbon dater gadget and measured the age of that CO₂ and it measured 3 seconds old. Therefore, the earth cannot possibly be more than 6000 years old, nor can it possibly be 6000 years old. OMG, the earth cannot even possibly be more than 3 seconds old....

 

[AXL72]

I forgot to add, "...at the current rate of salination of rainwater, the earth does not even exist..."

 

[deco_martini]

How Does Wood Petrify Sorry couldn't find the popular science link.

It doesn't matter. Rapid petrification doesn't poke any holes in evolutionary or cosmological theory.

There are many ways of determining the age of things we find in the earth. It isn't merely the battery of chemical or composition based tests but also where it is found, how deep it is found, the surrounding geologic evidence, and many other factors. The ability to artificially petrify woods in a lab does not somehow magically cast new doubt on all those other tests.

 

[sheck33]

'Thus the timeframe for the formation of the petrified wood within the geological record is totally compatible with the biblical time-scale of a recent creation and a subsequent devastating global Flood.'

Yup, except, in order to conclude from this data that creation and a flood took place, you will have to ignore all other data that is in perfect agreement with evolutionary theory.

This is so typical, one scientific fact 'supports' creation, innumerable facts totally contradict creation, conclusion: creation is valid

Counting the hits while ignoring the misses.

 

[Thalassamania]

I'm still waiting for you creationists to come up with something, anything. You've had a couple of days now and still nothing. Shall I give up expecting something from you?

What does your failure prove? It proves, at least, that you've not a creative bone in your body. If the answer is not pre-chewed or pre-digested for you on the web of from the pulpit you can't deal with the question. I pose a new question that your puppeteers have not pre-recorded a stupid answer for and when your string is pulled ... all we get is Simon and Garfunkel:

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, the words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence.​

 

[timegan]

What a thread, politics and religon. Both topics can burn. It does'nt matter how old the earth is. You have rocks in your yard older than 6000 years. Have you ever heard of the grand canyon? Or as a Canadian...Niagra falls? It all comes down to a simple statment. Existence just exists, here and all threw the universe, it just is. Why look to a creator? Existence has always.....well existed. To take the opposite conclusion is just unacceptable. We all exist yes? and so does the rest of the universe. Just accept it. How can you not?

 

[Soggy]

How Does Wood Petrify Sorry couldn't find the popular science link.

I don't see anything about Mt St Helens except for

Evolutionists go through similar reasoning based on the fossils. They see similarities in anatomical structures and the seeming order in which fossils are found in the geologic column and conclude that evolution occurred. How does their reasoning differ from that which we have used for deciding that the oldest layer is at the bottom of our imaginary pile and the youngest is at the top? The deposition of sedimentary layers has been observed many times (the geologic activities at Mount St. Helens provided us with a remarkable natural field model of significant volcanic and aqueous depositions, as well as deep canyon formation), we can repeat the process at will, and we can even predict certain characteristics that will form during the deposition. The French creationary geologist, Guy Berthault has conducted such experiments and next month we will look at his work in this area. The evolutionary process, however, has never been observed, it cannot be repeated at will, and we cannot predict which characteristics would evolve. Furthermore, it is important to realize that the order of rock layers says nothing about the length of time for deposition.

That doesn't discuss anything about dating of Mt St Helens and wood altered by the volcano.

Not one person's rationale, views from religious scholars. Oh that's right, you guys don't even recognize PHD's in your own scientific community that disagree with you. My bad.

So? It still ain't a theory - it doesn't have any supporting evidence.

There is some evidence, at least, to suggest the Earth might not be as old as we think...ie the salt content of the Earth's Oceans. At the current rate of Salination of the Oceans as measured, if the Earth were older than 20,000 years, the Earth's Oceans would be like the dead sea.

Untrue. To make a ridiculous claim like this, you must provide a citations. Read #24.
How Good are those Young-Earth Arguments: Hovind's 'Proofs' (continued)

Young-earth "proof" #24: Given the rate of salt influx to the oceans, they should be much saltier than they are if the earth were billions of years old.

24. Dr. Hovind is assuming that salt cannot be removed from the oceans. The more sophisticated creationists, such as Melvin Cook, know better than to make that assumption. Here's what Cook had to say:

The validity of the application of total salt in the ocean in the determination of age turned out to have a very simple answer in the fact shown by Goldschmidt (1954) that it is in steady state and therefore useless as a means of determining the age of the oceans. [Cook, 1966, p.73]

(Dalrymple, 1984, pp.115-116)

Thus, salt is being removed from the oceans as quickly as it is being added by the world's rivers. Consequently, no age can be calculated, save a minimum age based upon an assumption of initial salt content. There is no comfort here for the young-earth creationist.

Oh, look they actually reference an actual study!

Finally I'll throw a personal observation out and you tell me why you think it hasn't happened sooner. I've observed several invasive species in my life that have invaded the Southern US from Mexico. It was a species of ant. A combination of red and black ant they were extremely aggressive. As a matter of fact they wiped out the indiginous red and black ants in the area. These ants were native to Mexico and the American SouthWest. I noticed them in Colorado years before noticing them in my home state of Tennessee. I realize that man, and modern travel, has sped this process up somewhat but if these ants have been around for millions of years as advertised...why did I witness this invasion? Shouldn't that have already occurred naturally about 500,000 years ago? I mean, if you start in Brazil and migrate up (somewhat similar pattern of migration as the Killer Bees) It doesn't take long for an aggressive species to spread.

Naturally, organisms don't tend to migrate unless there is some selective pressure (like a food source goes away) to force them to. It's not like they just "decide" to walk off to some preconceived destination.

[Mexican Ant accent]"Hey, Amigo let's go to Tennessee, eh? I hear it's nice there."[/Mexican Ant]

500,000, years ago we didn't have cars and airplanes for species to easily stow away on. I don't know anything about your specific ant, but I would bet that they migrated as a result of being transported around.

So evidence for a younger earth than 4.5 billion is there, it just takes questioning the old model examining the totality of the evidence.

Nope, there is no evidence that suggests such a thing, except for made up and misunderstood facts.

 

[MikeFerrara]

The real key is to pay teachers at a scale appropriate to their field. As long as we insist on paying teachers the same, regardless of discipline and only differentiate by the number of credit hours we'll never get there. English teachers and history teachers are in good supply, math and science teachers are not. So pay math and science teachers more (I say pay all teachers more but permit fields that are in short supply to make more) and that problem will solve it self. Frankly I'd rather teach than do what I'm doing now, but I can't afford to.

you've topuched on but of the many things wrong with the government school system. I would submit that the real problem here is that the idea of the government running he school system is flawed from the start and you aren't going to fix it.

We've probably all had the highschool math teacher who really only wants to coach football but has to teach something so he gets stuck teaching the class that nobody else wants...and they never know anything about math...good thing the teachers addition has the answers. LOL

Higher pay would increase the number of people available to choose from. Especially in the case of math and science, you might need to pay enough to compete with industry. that could be quite a bit. Personally, I don't attend a government school, I don't have children in a government school and I don't want to pay any more taxes...so pay them out of your own pocket.

What about the idea of tenure?...the teachers union? It all contributes to a mess that doesn't work, doesn't meet the needs of the market and is a huge tax burden on everyone.