Religion Creationism, Evolution and the Bible

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Oh hey, this thread has popped to life again, months later.

What definition of "complexity" are you using? Because I'm pretty damned sure that the definition used by probability is about the pure convolution of the thing completely irrespective of usefulness. The most "complex" book is the densest and hardest to describe mass of pure randomness, not an intricate treatise, because the treatise has patterns that make it more likely. The most "complex" physical systems are turbulences larger than the Sun.
Not sure what this is supposed to have to do with anything. Is it indicating that you want to go down the 'useful information' discussion trail?
No, it's just proven an increasing pain in the ass to actually get numbers because as it turns out we don't know how the shit we have works. Since we don't know how the present operates, we cannot actually construct a meaningful hypothesis of how it came to be. This is exceedingly basic "we don't know", and you just fucking can't stand ever doing anything but inserting "therefor God", despite never having any positive evidence in favor of God, just very large improbabilities of the mainstream alternatives that don't satisfy you.
This is both putting words in my mouth, and admitting that evolution is a matter of faith, not science.

1. My argument is that as the material sciences have developed in breadth and depth of understanding, they have made it increasingly clear how absurd the idea that life could arise without some form of intelligent designer is.

Every complex machine we see on the macro-scale comes about because some form of intelligent life created it. The machinery of life, just on the cellular level, is obscenely complex. The simplest explanation for how such a complex thing could come about, is through an intelligent designer.

Why do atheists so stridently reject the most obvious explanation for how life came about? To quote Richard Lewontin, outspoken atheist and evolutionist:

"Evolutionists ... have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. "

The only arguments other than this I've heard for why Intelligent design is not an acceptable theory for the origins of life, is ad hominem tirades and appeals to authority.

2. By admitting this: "No, it's just proven an increasing pain in the ass to actually get numbers because as it turns out we don't know how the shit we have works. Since we don't know how the present operates, we cannot actually construct a meaningful hypothesis of how it came to be. This is exceedingly basic "we don't know""

You are admitting that evolution is not a matter of established fact, it is instead a matter of supposition at absolute best. The problem is, that's before you start taking actual scientific evidence into account.

When evolution was first popularized in Darwin's day, the cell was barely known to exist. How it worked and how complex it was, people had no clue. And yet, Darwin himself still commented on how sophisticated life was made it seem improbable that it should arise through random chance.

Then scientific understanding expanded.

Cells are more complex than they first looked. They have many separate specialized internal structures, and generally speaking without any one of those structures, the cell dies. IIRC there's one or two that the cell can briefly survive without, but it still messes it up but good. This meant that life was more complex, and the idea of it arising and then evolving through random chance became less likely.

Then scientific understanding expanded.

It turns out that what goes on inside of those cellular structures is also incredibly complex. Like, stupidly mind-bogglingly complex, to a degree that modelling what happens in a single cell structure is very difficult even with modern computing. It's still not fully understood how all of these processes work. This made it all the more improbable that random chance could work as a source of life.

Then scientific understanding expanded.

Turns out that when you do protracted mutation studies on things with short lifecycles like flies, there are hard limits to just how much they can mutate before becoming uttely nonviable. Further, basically all substantial mutations decrease the viability of the life form, not increase it. At absolute best, you get something that makes it more specialized for dealing with a specific thing (like how sickle-cell anemia increases resistance to Malaria), but causes it to be much less viable in general.

There has not yet been a single clear cut laboratory example of 'this mutation has caused this life-form to be measurably more robust and survivable.' You get an unending roll of failures though; on the whole, this made random chance more improbable as an explanation.

Then scientific understanding expanded.

Turns out that the amount of information involved in epigenetics, protein synthesis and identification, and any number of other cellular functions that life literally cannot exist without is even more complex than we thought, and more complex than things like DNA. The amount of complexity you need to cross over as a minimum bar to have a viable life form increased by hundreds of zeros.


Every single time scientific understanding of biochemistry improves substantially, evolution becomes less and less credible as a theory of the origins of life much less speciation.

There's a pattern here. Why do atheists and evolutionists refuse to recognize it? Ask Richard Lewontin or the dozens upon dozens of 'scientists' who deliberately created hoaxes as 'proof' of evolution.

You literally argue "if you do not have a perfect intermediate example, you are wrong":
Putting words in my mouth again.
Do you have any meaningful definition of what this would look like? Do you actually have any concept of what the in-between would indicate? Do you actually have a fucking clue what the steps along the way would be? Because the big issue with abiogenesis that causes you to reject it is that nobody in the sciences does, when science never claimed that kind of completeness to begin with.
This is absolute nonsense.

Evolution is taught as hard fact in essentially every public school in the western world. I'd have to check textbook by textbook to have an idea of what it's like now, but back when I was a kid and in my teens, 'life arise from the primordial soup' was certainly taught, and I've been given no impression that's not what is taught now.

Generations now have been inculcated into the religious dogma of hardline atheists during their formative years, and it is taught as hard truth, at best with a sop to 'we called it a theory,' but it's always 'This life form lived X million years ago,' 'The Dinosaurs lives X-Y million years ago,' never as 'it is hypothesized that.'

Atheists absolutely claim completeness, and cloak themselves in the cultural authority of science to try to back that up, while simultaneously aggressively and militantly running other religions out of the public square while subjecting them to all kinds of defamations, ad hominem, and slander.

Just the book title 'The God Delusion' by Dawkins tells you a great deal about the attitude of the hardline atheists, not to mention the things they've done in pursuit of cultural dominance.

Or the theories they've spun, like eugenics, 'scientific racism,' etc, etc.
You insist that because there is such a gap right now, there absolutely must be God in there, without any positive proof of that hypothesis. Your "proof" has always been just screaming that science is wrong because it's unlikely or has something missing, not any hard disproof that it cannot be right. But the science looks at a gap, and works on filling it. Just because we don't know now, does not mean we cannot know, that's the whole point of science.
Classic atheist straw man. 'You're just trying to shut down scientific inquiry,' also called the 'god of the gaps.' It's a thought-terminating cliche, among other things, and you seem to have pretty thoroughly fallen for it, unfortunately.

If these 'scientists' were interested in filling the gap of 'where did life come from?' then 'An intelligent being designed it' would be an explanation on the table for reasonable consideration as an answer. Instead, hardline atheists not just reject the possibility out of hand, but relentlessly attack and often mock anybody who suggests it, claiming it is 'unscientific.,'

Intelligent Design of life is just as scientific as Intelligent Design of The Model T Ford, the F-35, or the keyboard I'm typing with right now.

What it isn't, is adherent to the presupposition of absolute materialism as the only acceptable worldview.

Also, as a note, any request for absolute proof of a negative is inherently unscientific, because it is beyond the means of science to conclusively prove a negative. Just another way that hardline atheists use bad-faith argumentation to try to shut anyone who doesn't adhere to their worldview out of the argument.

If you really want to talk probability, "omniscience" requires indescribably infinite components, owing to the proofs for cardinalities beyond countable infinities, and even the trivial uncountables like the real numbers. Any time there is a property included in that that is not certain, the probability goes down, and there are indescribably many properties to become improbable. And that's one part that must be accepted axiomatically, because it literally cannot be proven positively.

Yes, Omniscience is a property attributed to a supernatural being, that is a being that is beyond natural limitations. I do understand how that works.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
Not sure what this is supposed to have to do with anything.
...Your argument is entirely about complex systems only arising from intelligent design. The nature of "complexity" as used in the relevant mathematics that are part of your reason for this conclusion is extremely bloody important. Useful systems are, by definition, reliant on regularities, and thus have complexity limitations that meaningless noise does not.

You are admitting that evolution is not a matter of established fact, it is instead a matter of supposition at absolute best. The problem is, that's before you start taking actual scientific evidence into account.
It's a "supposition" that has every positive piece of evidence backing it. Again, you've argued nothing but improbability against evolution, not a specific reason in favor of intelligent design. Your argument constantly comes back to equating "complexity" with interdependency, using this factor to declare equivalency between inefficient and haphazard biology and vastly more work-capable machinery overwhelmingly following clear geometries to say that both must be intelligently designed, then declare that this intelligent designer must be your comprehensively inexplicable and unjustifiable extreme.

There has not yet been a single clear cut laboratory example of 'this mutation has caused this life-form to be measurably more robust and survivable.'
E. Coli long-term evolution experiment. Has resulted in entirely new biochemical pathways being developed, from scratch, which were traced to multiple stages of base-pair alterations and genome segments flipping, and re-develop from shortly-previous samples rather consistently, but not unrelated samples. Yes, it's using an extremely specific measure of fitness, but it still demonstrates the theory.

Putting words in my mouth again.
You asked for something in-between alive and inanimate, in the quote immediately after that line, then refuse to define anything of what that looks like. How is this not dismissal for lack of a comprehensive chain?

If these 'scientists' were interested in filling the gap of 'where did life come from?' then 'An intelligent being designed it' would be an explanation on the table for reasonable consideration as an answer.
There was a hell of a lot of work on it for decades from people like you, that turned up absolutely nothing to support intelligent design directly. Your "then scientific understanding expanded" rant ignores how rather major hangups regarding distribution came to be readily answered by plate tectonics and how genetic testing provides corroborating evidence for the taxonomies, to say nothing of all the dating techniques that nearly always show the partial sequences have been placed in the correct order.

Also, as a note, any request for absolute proof of a negative is inherently unscientific, because it is beyond the means of science to conclusively prove a negative.
Gee, it's almost like neither of us are high-brow intellectuals with formal logic memorized and rigorously adhered to, like you not having the right words for what you were calculating, nor any allowance for where dependencies are less than absolute, and starting from a drastically larger case than the actual necessity even for extant organisms. And you're still not actually giving anything in favor of intelligent design in particular, just calling evolution wrong for being unlikely.

Yes, Omniscience is a property attributed to a supernatural being, that is a being that is beyond natural limitations. I do understand how that works.
So you're dismissing having your position pointed out as far more extremely failing the very standards responsible for you doubting evolution by bluntly admitting that you do not apply those standards to the view you do accept?
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
It's a "supposition" that has every positive piece of evidence backing it. Again, you've argued nothing but improbability against evolution, not a specific reason in favor of intelligent design. Your argument constantly comes back to equating "complexity" with interdependency, using this factor to declare equivalency between inefficient and haphazard biology and vastly more work-capable machinery overwhelmingly following clear geometries to say that both must be intelligently designed, then declare that this intelligent designer must be your comprehensively inexplicable and unjustifiable extreme.
Again with the putting words in my mouth. I'm not going to bother to answer any part of this except 1, because that's the only argument I'm making.

Yes, I have focused on the argument of improbability.

Because when your probability is less than 1 in 10^230, improbability is the only argument needed.

E. Coli long-term evolution experiment. Has resulted in entirely new biochemical pathways being developed, from scratch, which were traced to multiple stages of base-pair alterations and genome segments flipping, and re-develop from shortly-previous samples rather consistently, but not unrelated samples. Yes, it's using an extremely specific measure of fitness, but it still demonstrates the theory.

Is this altered from of E. Coli more robust in general, or is it more robust in a specific way, at the cost of being less robust in other ways?

Because that's the general pattern observed with highly specialized variants of a given organism.

You asked for something in-between alive and inanimate, in the quote immediately after that line, then refuse to define anything of what that looks like. How is this not dismissal for lack of a comprehensive chain?
I'm still not clear on what you're trying to get at with this.
There was a hell of a lot of work on it for decades from people like you, that turned up absolutely nothing to support intelligent design directly. Your "then scientific understanding expanded" rant ignores how rather major hangups regarding distribution came to be readily answered by plate tectonics and how genetic testing provides corroborating evidence for the taxonomies, to say nothing of all the dating techniques that nearly always show the partial sequences have been placed in the correct order.
...You are side-stepping my actual argument, to address minor secondary issues.

'How might life have spread across the globe' is irrelevant, if there is no demonstrated way for life to have arisen in the first place.

'What layering and order do we find fossils in' is irrelevant, if there is no demonstrated way for life to have arisen in the first place.

Gee, it's almost like neither of us are high-brow intellectuals with formal logic memorized and rigorously adhered to, like you not having the right words for what you were calculating, nor any allowance for where dependencies are less than absolute, and starting from a drastically larger case than the actual necessity even for extant organisms. And you're still not actually giving anything in favor of intelligent design in particular, just calling evolution wrong for being unlikely.
There's a basic principle to reasoned thought; when several alternatives are presented, the least improbable of them, is the most likely to be true. Not certain to be true, but the most likely. Further investigation is used to gain a more comprehensive answer.

Intelligent Design as a theory of origins is a a perfectly reasonable explanation, to anyone who isn't ideologically committed to materialism.

Evolution is not a reasonable theory to anyone who isn't ideologically committed to materialism, or under the sway of their propaganda.

Intelligent Design is a proposed explanation for how life came to exist in all of its complexity. Whether or not it is a valid explanation is proven or disproven based on whether or not such an intelligent being exists. If true, It also moves further discussion into either the search for other intelligent life in the universe to talk to about the issue, or the realm of philosophy or theology.

Evolution is another proposed explanation for how life came to exist in all of its complexity. It is already functionally disproven by its inability to explain abiogenesis or irreducible complexity. Either of these issues by itself functionally defeats the theory, and my 'rant' about scientific knowledge expanding, focuses on how the more our understanding of how the world functions increases, the more patently absurd the idea abiogenesis is even possible becomes, much less irreducible complexity.

A theory is functionally disproven if there is one element that it is proven incapable of covering. 'Spontaneous generation' was functionally disproven when a piece of meat put in a sealed container with a transparent top failed to spontaneously generate maggots. Flat Earth belief was functionally disproven a number of times, but the Magellan Expedition by itself got the job done.

Until evolutionists can reasonably explain abiogenesis and irreducible complexity, any claims of scientific credibility on their part are nothing but lies.

So you're dismissing having your position pointed out as far more extremely failing the very standards responsible for you doubting evolution by bluntly admitting that you do not apply those standards to the view you do accept?

Another case of I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. What I said was in relation to a supernatural being not being bound by natural limitations. I don't understand what bearing that has on what you're saying here.




Some of these things lead into another matter about evolution as a theory of origins, specifically, What is the utility?

Even if we grant that macro-evolution is true, then what utility does this knowledge have?

Does it somehow change what we can accomplish technologically right now? No. It has no bearing on physics or mechanical technology.

Does it somehow give us a new means of developing better medicine? No. Biochemistry still works the same way however it came to be what it is.

Does it put us on the track of some greater level of understanding of biology, chemistry, or physics? No. Evolution would change things over time-scales to be useless to humans, and we're certainly not going to 'evolve' better medicine in useful timetables.

Does it in any way shape or form improve the human condition? No. And I'll save demonstrating how it has made things so very much worse for another time.


What are we going to do? Use evolution to improve the human condition by waiting for hundreds of thousands of years for a better human to evolve?

Does evolution allow atheists to claim social status and prestige, while forcing Christians and all other religions out of the public square, claiming that in order to be considered a person 'of reason and science' you must first foreswear any belief in God, and functionally become a member of their religion?

Yes.


Materialists have dedicated more than a century and a half of effort now, including immense amounts of time and money, stridently trying to prove their personal religious dogma to be 'scientific fact.'

How much more useful to mankind would it have been to use that money improving our understanding of physics? Of engineering? Of medicine? If it had been spent on building factories, refining designs, better education, etc, etc?

If Evolution is so patently true, then why do hardline evolutionists like Dawkins not get on with the business of further developing biochemistry, instead of endlessly fighting an ideological battle against Christians and other theists?

Because fighting an ideological battle against other religions is the whole point.

I will again reference the quote from Lewontin. It isn't about facts, it isn't about what the evidence shows, it's about a pre-existing commitment to materialism, and the need they have to not let 'the divine foot in the door.'

If you want to claim that isn't the case, then show me how abiogenesis works, and how you can get past irreducible complexity.
 
Last edited:

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
Evolution is not a reasonable theory to anyone who isn't ideologically committed to materialism, or under the sway of their propaganda.

Why do Caucasians look different to sub-Saharan Africans when we all came from the some place once?

My forefathers clearly changed when they left the mother continent, as they came into a far colder environment. Our paler skin is symptomatic of a far less furious sun than what early man knew in equatorial Africa. This happened over the course of a few hundred thousand years which is a blink of the eye as far as evolution is concerned. And the less said of our lost Neanderthal brothers, the better.

This ain't it chief.

And I know what's going on here, but this pointless battle does not aid the Faith. Indeed, waging crusade on the fossil record was a tremendously embarrassing part of our history and ultimately did more harm than good. Not to mention how Sumeria and Gobekli Tepe themselves are frankly a fatal blow to a more dogmatic reading of genesis.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Agriculture.

Selective breeding is the opposite of evolution. It is literally an intelligent actor determining which traits to breed for, and which to not. Further, this was a practice for millennia before the Darwinists came along, in animal husbandry as well.

Why do Caucasians look different to sub-Saharan Africans when we all came from the some place once?

You're actually supporting my point here.

If we suppose that substantially different melanin counts are the result of evolution, rather than selectively breeding for expression of genes that already existed, this is again a matter of the past.

What medical capability would be unlocked because this different level of melanin originated from evolution, that would not be unlocked because it is how it is, however it got there?
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
Further, this was a practice for millennia before the Darwinists came along, in animal husbandry as well.
Yes, and Evolution explains it, and therefore let's us be more precise with it, and tossing it out asks the question, "well, why not try something else" you know, like the Soviets did, that was 'fun'.
Selective breeding is the opposite of evolution.
No it's not.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding of a lot of people, Evolution is NOT "Prescriptive" it is "Descriptive". It is not, "We believe in Evolution therefore" it is "Evolution is an explanation of how these things happen". Evolution doesn't care WHY something is breeding, only THAT it is breeding.
If we suppose that substantially different melanin counts are the result of evolution, rather than selectively breeding for expression of genes that already existed, this is again a matter of the past.
And here too, you fail to grasp how evolution works, because yes, it is, in fact, mostly the increased application of genes that already exist, there's a 2% or so difference between a Human and a Chimp. But you don't find people AS pale as Northern Europeans in purely African descent. You do find differing amounts of melatonin in "pure" Africans though. And from that initial fairly small in comparison difference you wind up with a difference big enough that we say "white" and "black".
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
Again with the putting words in my mouth.
How, exactly, are your arguments anything beyond "It Does Not Have All The Answers, Therefor It's Wrong"?

Because when your probability is less than 1 in 10^230, improbability is the only argument needed.
As opposed to infinitesimal as with an omniscient creator, a counter-point you simply dismissed with "of course the supernatural doesn't follow natural law"? And you're still clinging to the extremely bloated number that's been shown wrong a variety of ways you started with instead of revising your talking point to be accurate.

For reference, 1,308,759 is the number of base pairs in the genome of the smallest verified fully free-living organism (my previous examples turned out to be intracellular parasites and symbionts), giving 787,952 digits for the naive combinations.

Is this altered from of E. Coli more robust in general, or is it more robust in a specific way, at the cost of being less robust in other ways?
Testing micro-organisms for general-purpose fitness in realistic environments is a logistical nightmare because you have to re-culture from scratch every single round, and controlling variables is functionally hopeless because of how many of the variables are expressly about response to a lack of control. So again with demanding incredibly difficult completeness to be willing to consider it.

'How might life have spread across the globe' is irrelevant, if there is no demonstrated way for life to have arisen in the first place.

'What layering and order do we find fossils in' is irrelevant, if there is no demonstrated way for life to have arisen in the first place.
Given the Christian alternative supposes a single mating pair of origin for humans, the transit of life across presently-unconnected areas is in fact of noticeable importance, and alternate explanations of the fossil record tend towards Last Tuesdayism because of how many things interlock to support the dating showing clear trends across millions of years.

Also, again with the demand for completeness, how many times do you have to be told "science at large does not make these claims"? It's manipulative assholes in the pedagogy department behind your grievances, not the entire body of empirical materialist evolutionary biology.

There's a basic principle to reasoned thought; when several alternatives are presented, the least improbable of them, is the most likely to be true.
So how's that work with the infinitesimal probability of omniscience?

Another case of I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.
That you're rejecting your own evidentiary standards being applied to the position you hold.

Does it somehow change what we can accomplish technologically right now?
Was actually pretty important in pinning down Mycoplasma Laboratorium, the current record holder for most synthetic organism (simulated in full in a computer before in-vivo testing) and smallest genome of a fully self-replicating organism (albeit derived from obligate intracellular parasites) at 531,560 base pairs encoding 473 genes.

Does it somehow give us a new means of developing better medicine?
Predicting mutations in viruses is the fundamental basis for the yearly flu vaccines, and while the results have so far been marginal with some rather impressive consequences due to a variety of bypasses to regulation and poor design choices, it's at the heart of every vaccine beyond raw inoculation.

Does it put us on the track of some greater level of understanding of biology, chemistry, or physics?
Like you very blatantly do not believe, given how little you know about the deeper scientific work. The amount of biochemistry we only understand because of digging through genome comparisons based on evolutionary predictions is immense.

Does it in any way shape or form improve the human condition?
Huge swaths of medical science come back to using the body of theories to measure out longer-term care processes in the face of microbe evolution. Draw that arbitrary line between "small scale biochemistry" and morphologies all you like, the processes are the exact same as best we can identify from quite a lot of experimenting and observation.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
If I got some money every time someone used the "you just don't understand how evolution works" dodge, I could probably buy a nice yacht by now.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
And if a donation came in every time anyone claimed that bacteria becoming immune to some chemical under laboratory conditions was somehow proof that all living things had a single common ancestry... well, I could employ a crew for that yacht.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
If I got some money every time someone used the "you just don't understand how evolution works" dodge, I could probably buy a nice yacht by now.

And if a donation came in every time anyone claimed that bacteria becoming immune to some chemical under laboratory conditions was somehow proof that all living things had a single common ancestry... well, I could employ a crew for that yacht.

Fossil

Record

Do. You. Speak. It?
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Fossil

Record

Do. You. Speak. It?

Ah yes - and if I got given money for every time someone talks as if the mere existence of fossils is somehow proof of "Evolution" - and all the problems with the mechanism of it can be waved away, because fossils...

I could have that yacht, and it's crew, and a catering staff to serve delicious meals...
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
all the problems with the mechanism of it can be waved away, because fossils...

Ah yes, "irreducible complexity".

Just ignore Archeopteryx demonstrating simplified wing structures.

Just ignore the "Lung Fish" demonstrating simplified air breathing apparatus.

Just you know, insist that systems never start off doing something entirely different than they wind up doing.

As far as Biogenesis, frankly, the Theory of Evolution doesn't actually give a damn if you actually read what it's doing. Scientists like looking at it because it's an interesting puzzle but "Evolution" doesn't actually CARE if God made the first bits of life.

Ah yes - and if I got given money for every time someone talks as if the mere existence of fossils is somehow proof of "Evolution"
Do you have an actual alternative explanation that isn't "God deepfaked it as a test of faith"?
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
And if a donation came in every time anyone claimed that bacteria becoming immune to some chemical under laboratory conditions was somehow proof that all living things had a single common ancestry... well, I could employ a crew for that yacht.
The turbidity shift of developing a mechanism to process sucrose as a nutrient was so massive that the researchers' first thought was that it HAD to be contamination. Took them a while to pin down what the fuck happened.

Ah yes - and if I got given money for every time someone talks as if the mere existence of fossils is somehow proof of "Evolution" - and all the problems with the mechanism of it can be waved away, because fossils...
The fossils show morphologies that do not exist today, with the dates giving us a variety of trends of changes, quite a few providing clear paths from those non-extant morphologies to modern ones, further supported by the lack of nearly any extant ones alongside. This results in explanations for similarities between crocodilians and birds that distinguish these extremely different creatures from any other vertebrate, as well as similarities between the also quite ecologically different members of Whippomorpha (whales, dolphins, and hippos).

You not being aware of how incredibly massive the body of interlocking evidence giving interdisciplinary leads is does not change that evolution being a thing is on about the same level as electromagnetism with how much shit we'd have to rewrite if we're wrong. And if that's because of borking the time-scale on radioisotope dating, electromagnetism becomes a casualty because of the interdependence of the models for it and the nuclear forces.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Do you have an actual alternative explanation that isn't "God deepfaked it as a test of faith"?

Yes of course I do.
I'm not denying that fossils are the remains of real living things, the idea that God put them there to "test people's faith" is, and always has been, a strawman position.

The idea that they represent a gradual progression from simple ancestral life to all complex life, on the other hand...

Let me explain something you might not have known: Young Earth Creationists (like myself) believe that most of the Earth's fossil-bearing rock strata were deposited relatively recently, in the Flood. All those different sorts of animals we see the remains of there were contemporaneous. Trilobites on the seafloor, funny amphibian critters in the swamplands, dinosaurs and suchlike on dry land, etc.
Not all of it though. Some is post-flood. Woolly mammoths lives post-flood, in the glaciation era that followed the geological disruptions of the flood.

This is in contrast to the position of Old Earth Creationists, who tend to hold, I think, that the great flood was just at the end of the glaciation, and represented a rapid melting. So the sea-level rose rapidly, overwhelming what was "the whole world" from the perspective of the people at the time. I think that's their position.

While OEC's believe that the world is billions of years old, with different lifeforms existing at different times, they still attribute this to God, not to blind natural processes.

Atheism needs an old Earth, while Theism as such does not really need a young Earth.


People tend to look dimly on those who spend their welfare on ostentatious luxury items no matter how much money their disability earns them

No ostentation would be involved. Saying I could buy a yacht is just a way of expressing how much money I'd have if I got a donation every time people used tired old talking-points.
Given a choice I would probably sooner custom-build a submarine, and go full Captain Nemo. :)
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
Let me explain something you might not have known: Young Earth Creationists (like myself) believe that most of the Earth's fossil-bearing rock strata were deposited relatively recently, in the Flood
Ah... Let me explain something to you, we have fossils that CANNOT FUNCTION in the same atmospheric mix. It is literally impossible for a number of these fossils to coexist AT ALL. On top of having fossils for things that exist in the same ecological niche in the same geographic locations disjointed by time. Even ignoring the dating problem, no. Even ignoring the dating, just the fossils alone tell us a story entirely disproving that concept. You cannot have bugs the size of vans, dinosaurs, and sabertooth in the same atmosphere.

EDIT: you know what, no, Sabertooth is contemporary with the Mammoths. Bugs and Dinos are still coexistant according to your theory and still don't function in the same atmospheric mix. Plenty of questions about how they went extinct IN the Flood given Noah though.
This is in contrast to the position of Old Earth Creationists, who tend to hold, I think, that the great flood was just at the end of the glaciation, and represented a rapid melting.
Not how glaciatian ending works, not something there's evidence for either.
While OEC's believe that the world is billions of years old, with different lifeforms existing at different times, they still attribute this to God, not to blind natural processes.
Evolution doesn't CARE if God was doing giant selective breeding programs to get to the current world state from scratch, all Evolution does is explain HOW those breeding programs functioned.

Evolution doesn't require Atheism, Atheism doesn't require Evolution, as thoroughly demonstrated when the Soviets tossed the whole thing out as "Capitalistic".
 
Last edited:

bintananth

behind a desk
Ah... Let me explain something to you, we have fossils that CANNOT FUNCTION in the same atmospheric mix. It is literally impossible for a number of these fossils to coexist AT ALL. On top of having fossils for things that exist in the same ecological niche in the same geographic locations disjointed by time. Even ignoring the dating problem, no. Even ignoring the dating, just the fossils alone tell us a story entirely disproving that concept. You cannot have bugs the size of vans, dinosaurs, and sabertooth in the same atmosphere.
You don't even need differences in atmospheric composition to disprove it.

An alligator will freeze to death in the arctic and a polar bear will die of heat stroke in the tropics. Like them, dinosours and sabertooths were adapted for very different climates.

We are practically the only land species which can thrive in both the arctic and the tropics. Any climate, really, because we collectively tell Mother Nature to "bring it" and laugh.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Ah... Let me explain something to you, we have fossils that CANNOT FUNCTION in the same atmospheric mix. It is literally impossible for a number of these fossils to coexist AT ALL. On top of having fossils for things that exist in the same ecological niche in the same geographic locations disjointed by time. Even ignoring the dating problem, no. Even ignoring the dating, just the fossils alone tell us a story entirely disproving that concept. You cannot have bugs the size of vans, dinosaurs, and sabertooth in the same atmosphere.

Dude... in this world today, we have a vast diversity of lifeforms that cannot, and do not, survive in the same environments. Bacteria for which atmospheric Oxygen is a poison, as an extreme example. A river frog cannot survive in the same body of water as a basket starfish, for example. The environment at the bottom of the sea is incompatible with life-as-we-know-it on land, tropical plants will not grow in Siberia, etc etc.

When different species have to compete for the same ecological niche it often results in one or the other species going extinct. We see this happen, with "invasive species". Those species are not time-travelling.

The idea of the Earth's atmospheric content being higher in the world before the Flood is one you would find in YEC literature. Along with the atmosphere being denser, and the oceans less saline. None of those things should be taken as physical constants.

Do you think that Oxygen levels are identical all across the Earth, right now? Or air density and humidity?
Climb up a high mountain, and you can see different plant biomes at different altitudes, on the same mountain.

EDIT: you know what, no, Sabertooth is contemporary with the Mammoths. Bugs and Dinos are still coexistant according to your theory and still don't function in the same atmospheric mix. Plenty of questions about how they went extinct IN the Flood given Noah though.

No, they didn't go extinct IN the Flood.
The YEC position is that dinosaurs, being something in-between warm and cold blooded, were unable to survive the climate changes of the post-Flood world.
The OEC position of course is that dinosaurs were long gone already by the time of the Flood.

Not how glaciatian ending works, not something there's evidence for either.

How fast a glacier can melt when it's time for melting is a topic I'm no expert on, and nor I think are you.

Evolution doesn't CARE if God was doing giant selective breeding programs to get to the current world state from scratch, all Evolution does is explain HOW those breeding programs functioned.

But the people pushing belief in "Evolution" very obviously do care.

Evolution doesn't require Atheism, Atheism doesn't require Evolution, as thoroughly demonstrated when the Soviets tossed the whole thing out as "Capitalistic".

Nah, they kept "Evolution" - it was just Darwinian evolution that they rejected. Because it looked to them as if Darwin had taken British ideas of economic competition in a free market and applied them to biology.
And they were kind of right about that - he had. :)

Socialist biology, comrades. And Socialist economics. :-D


You don't even need differences in atmospheric composition to disprove it.

An alligator will freeze to death in the arctic and a polar bear will die of heat stroke in the tropics. Like them, dinosours and sabertooths were adapted for very different climates.

We are practically the only land species which can thrive in both the arctic and the tropics. Any climate, really, because we collectively tell Mother Nature to "bring it" and laugh.

So by your logic, alligators and polar bears do not exist at the same time?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top