Creation vs. Evolution

[TCDiver1]

At the risk of coming off as a real pessimist, there is an awful lot of garbage out there.

Evil is an equal opportunity employer.

 

[bwerb]

Horse pucky from a website entited "The Heavens Declare the Glory of God."

Taken from a book, Big Bang Refined by Fire by Dr. Hugh Ross, 1998. Reasons To Believe, Pasadena, CA. Note: He couldn't find a publisher, Hugh Ross is the President and Director of Research of "Reasons To Believe"

He was trained in Astronomy, but only worked in the field for 5 years before becoming a preacher. His primary distinction in science was wining a "Grand Award" at the British Columbia Science Fair, 1963.

Give us a break, this guy had no idea of what he is talking about.

I have no idea what the author's background is I have actually enjoyed the work of a number of different well recognized cosmologists and physicists and appreciated that many of them have come out at the end of the day and said "paraphrased"...we know what happened...we just aren't quite sure why or how it all happened and we can't dismiss the idea of their being a God.

As to the specific validity of Hugh Ross...I have no idea...a web search led me to the quote which I used...I would comment however that merely labeling something as "crap" is hardly negates the validity of what was stated...I'm more than willing to delve into specific criticisms of the details...by all means, I don't have any problem turning a microscope on any of this, if something is show to be bunk, I'll reject it right alongside you. I think science is great, it is testable and gives us some tremendous knowledge and insight...I just don't reject the premise that there is a higher purpose to all of this and I don't see a belief in God as being diametrically opposed to scientific discovery, reason, mathematics, physics etc.

 

[MikeFerrara]

But no evolutionary biologists.<G>

The thing about science that the lay public does not understand is that there is always a bunch of people looking over your shoulder, and they can make their reputation faster by destroying your's rather than having to do the hard work of original research. We got more points in undergrad and grad seminars for carving up the presenter than we did for our own presentations. Tends to keep you honest.

Industry can be a rough place too. As much as I enjoy conversation and as much as I enjoyed what I used to do, I can't even begin to describe how refreshing it was to go back to shoeing horses and blacksmithing after 17 years of corporate life. Obviously I still have to deal with people but not on the same scale that I did as an engineer or under the same circumstances. I don't think I could ever go back to the world full time.

 

[Warthaug]

Sorry it comes out screwy on the cut/paste...it's 10 to the 23rd POWER...all the powers came out as four digit numbers instead of 10 followed by the "power"...dang I'll get this internet thing down someday...

Usually a carrot - '^' - is used to denote scientific notation. Some webpages will even superscript the text after the carrot.

So, in otherwords, 1x10^23, AKA: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That's a tonne-o-planets!

Bryan

 

[adurso]

I wonder. People tend to abuse any position they have. Priests, teachers, ministers, physicians and psychiatrists tend to get the kind of oportunities where they can take advantage of peoples trust in a physical way...sometimes when those people aren't even conscious. People in other professions get other types of oportunities.

Speaking of pederasts and the like, the other night I went to sleep on the couch while watching a DVD (I rarely watch TV) but my wife swiched on some goofy station before going to sleep herself. I woke up to some show where these people posed as children on the internet to catch adults trying to solicit them. They then had them come over to the house where they had cameras and police waiting. I only saw a few minutes of it but they nabed people from pretty much all walks of life. That I remember, there was at least one physician, at least one minister and I want to say that there was at least one teacher.

At the risk of coming off as a real pessimist, there is an awful lot of garbage out there.

Please remember when you see this stuff on the television that there are plenty of nice, moral, ethical, hard working people out there. The news media makes it appear that there are horrible things waiting to happen outside your door. Public perception due to the proliferation of the "If it bleeds, it leads" media mentality is that we live in dangerous times; not so- people are living longer healthier lives than at any other time in the past(for the most part)

I spent the first 25 years of my adult life hunting the evil barstuds in one form or another, there is a whole bunch of garbage out there, but there are still more good people than bad, irrespective of creationist or evolutionary beliefs...

 

[Thalassamania]

Usually a carrot - '^' - is used to denote scientific notation. Some webpages will even superscript the text after the carrot.

So, in otherwords, 1x10^23, AKA: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That's a tonne-o-planets!

Bryan

But we now have ^superscripting and _subscripting!

 

[Thalassamania]

I have no idea what the author's background is I have actually enjoyed the work of a number of different well recognized cosmologists and physicists and appreciated that many of them have come out at the end of the day and said "paraphrased"...we know what happened...we just aren't quite sure why or how it all happened and we can't dismiss the idea of their being a God.

As to the specific validity of Hugh Ross...I have no idea...a web search led me to the quote which I used...I would comment however that merely labeling something as "crap" is hardly negates the validity of what was stated...I'm more than willing to delve into specific criticisms of the details...by all means, I don't have any problem turning a microscope on any of this, if something is show to be bunk, I'll reject it right alongside you. I think science is great, it is testable and gives us some tremendous knowledge and insight...I just don't reject the premise that there is a higher purpose to all of this and I don't see a belief in God as being diametrically opposed to scientific discovery, reason, mathematics, physics etc.

Without spending half my life on a project of refuting foolishness. Just look at his items. They describe earth, but not the values required for a stable state to make life possible. Read James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis and something that explains Rene Thom's Catastrophe Theory.

Hugh Ross is, in my opinion, a scientist who could not cut it, now turned religious apologist and hack, nothing more and nothing less. I'm sure that he finds this a much cushier position since he is now surrounded by folks who know even less than he does rather than the other way around.

 

[adza]

those that claim that evolution has never been observed...you are wrong

From my understading, this depends on what you call 'evolution'.

For evolution to work (as far as from a blob to us) - additional information needs to be added to the DNA structure. (ie - there was none, and then there was information - and more information was added to construct our lungs, muscles, etc).

Creatures do change these days, but from what I'm aware of, that comes under 'mutation' more than evolution. (Mutation comes from loss of data, or in some cases, copies of the same data - ie when someone may have 6 fingers instead of 5).

Certain mutations have been descripted as evolution to support the theory, and not the other way around.

Cheers

Adam.

 

[BIGSAGE136]

"I AM". Now that's deep. You just cant knock what is!

 

[bwerb]

Read James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis and something that explains Rene Thom's Catastrophe Theory.

I'll check up on the Gaia Hypothesis...I know a bit about it and it's explanation of closed earth self regulation...as far as Rene Thom goes...I'm in the midst of reading Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"...more or less a reexamination of the resulting phenomena of Thom's work. (I'm also reading Jarred Diamond's Collapse...which I can see as having further relation to Thom's work, again in a much more layperson sense).