This is so GREAT I can hardly stand it…nice job, Terry!

Thank you, Cao. I want advance notice before your first video post goes up, OK? I can’t wait to see it, and I have no idea what your subject will be, but it doesn’t matter!

Wow, Great Video! You are 100% right!

I’m adding you to my blogroll over at: http://conservative-nation.blogspot.com

Hello, TD this is bob from “stoptheaclu.com” you wanted me to come here to continue the argument, and so I have.

You ask about the big bang and how all of the matter came into being and how it was squished and then how it exploded. No one truely knows these answers. However thier IS fairly concrete evidence for the exostance of the big bang, while concrete evidence for god is; lacking.

But don’t get hung up on the fact that thier is no evidence for the existance of god, because this is simply the way religion (and god) are designed.

Faith is a blind belief in somthing that is no, and and sometimes cannot, be proven. God’s exostance cannot (pardon my spelling) be proven because IF god’s exostance WERE to be proven then god would cease to be god.
(This is what I was driving at before when I said that IF science could prove gods existance then god would, inevitably, be destroyed)

As for the big bang and where the stuff came from there is a theory (and I use the word theory very loosely here)

The theory is that our universe exists on a plane that is parrallell to a secondary plane that also contains a universe much like our own. These two planes are attracted to each other, and when they touch they release huge amounts of enegy touching off a big bang in each plane (uniserse). This oputburst of energy forces the two planes away from each other and it is during this period that the universe lives the earth lives humanity evolves etc. you get the picture. Then as the energy within each plane is depleted. We call this entropy. The universes begin to go dark. A span of darkness goes on for a while (sorry I don’t know the exact theoretical number) untill the atraction between the two parralell planes once agian pulls them ogether setting off another big bang etc etc. You get it right?

Now it is very possible that this plane theory will be proven false, however, what separates the plane theory from your god theory is that scientists are hard at work trying to prove (or disprove) this theory wheras it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove or disprove your god-theory.

The plane thoery might be right and then agian it might be wrong, however your god- thoery can NEVER be proven right or wrong. So unless you have an experiment that can prove (or disprove) god’s existance. Then science stays out of the Science classrooms.

blah, I said science stays out of the science classrooms!
I meant RELIGION stays out of the science classroms.
sorry for any confusion.

LOL, don’t worry about your spelling, Bob. I hope I don’t offend anyone here with this, but if spelling is all they have to argue with you about, then they can’t handle your arguments, right? I’ll try and do better than that by you.

OK, on with the show…

Hello, TD this is bob from “stoptheaclu.com” you wanted me to come here to continue the argument, and so I have.

Welcome, Bob! Thanks for coming!

You ask about the big bang and how all of the matter came into being and how it was squished and then how it exploded. No one truely knows these answers. However thier IS fairly concrete evidence for the exostance of the big bang, while concrete evidence for god is; lacking.

I disagree that there is “fairly concrete evidence”, even NASA says that this issue is up in the air. They say that even though the THEORY (not FACT) has wide acceptance, that it probably never will be proven.

I don’t know how old you are, but are you married? Do you have children? Parents whom you love? How can you look at them and deny the existence of God? How can you see the wonders that nature produces — sunsets, beautiful mountains, stormy oceans, rain showers, rainbows, a starlit night — and deny that such beauty is the work of a Creator? Do you honestly believe that all of this came about without a purpose — that it just happened? Isn’t the very existence of humans, animals, plants, and other matter in our world “concrete proof” of a God?

I could never look my wife in the face and deny that God created her. That’s all the “concrete evidence” I need.

This goes to the very foundation of the argument that I was making. In my view, you are using faith in scientific theory to explain your views, since your theory cannot be proven. I am using faith in a Creator to explain my views, but you will not accept that God is the Creator (to you, my theory cannot be proven). How is that different? You may say “because of the research that went into the theory”.

To that I say, “So what? It’s still just a theory. You haven’t proven your point at all.” That’s probably pretty close to what you’d say about my beliefs, right?

Now let me throw a curve ball — what if there is a God, and He’s responsible for the Big Bang? I don’t see that the existence of God precludes a Big Bang happening, I mean the world was created somehow, right? God spoke, the world was created — maybe a Big Bang was what resulted when God spoke, who knows?

But don’t get hung up on the fact that thier is no evidence for the existance of god, because this is simply the way religion (and god) are designed.

LOL, oh, I won’t, because I have all the evidence I need. Once you’ve met God, you can’t deny that He’s real.

Faith is a blind belief in somthing that is no, and and sometimes cannot, be proven. God’s exostance cannot (pardon my spelling) be proven because IF god’s exostance WERE to be proven then god would cease to be god. (This is what I was driving at before when I said that IF science could prove gods existance then god would, inevitably, be destroyed)

Again I ask, how is your faith in scientific theory different from my faith in God?

OK, I don’t know where you got the idea that if God’s existence were to be proven then God would cease to be God from. How does that come about? Is it from an idea you have about faith? I’m not dissing you, I’m asking because I believe something very different from that, and the way I’m reading your argument, it doesn’t make sense to me. It might be me, could you clarify?

Number One, God’s existence has already been proven by the fact that we are here. Number Two, let’s say that God stepped down from Heaven and said, “Hey, guys, it’s me, I’m God”. Let’s say that it was all over the evening news. How could you deny it at that point? My perception of your argument (and I might have it wrong, if so, straighten me out) is this:

“There is no proof of God, so he doesn’t exist. But if you could prove that He exists, then He would no longer exist.”

Is that what you’re saying? If so, then you’re argument seems very illogical.

As for the big bang and where the stuff came from there is a theory (and I use the word theory very loosely here)

Now it is very possible that this plane theory will be proven false, however, what separates the plane theory from your god theory is that scientists are hard at work trying to prove (or disprove) this theory wheras it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove or disprove your god-theory.

Yes, I get it, but back to a question I posed in my video. Where did the original matter come from? Go Waaayyyyyyy back to however far you believe this happened, and look around. Hmmm, that’s matter. Wonder where that came from? Do you believe that it just always existed? Whereas you’re OK with saying that at a specific point in time the Universe was created, you believe that the matter was always just there? Where did the parallel planes come from? Was there another Big Bang before that?

Man, in all seriousness, if it did happen that way I’d love to be sitting on the planet you could see that from. Must’ve been a heckuva fireworks display!

Let me throw something out here, from Genesis, with notes by me.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty [but there was matter there, something was formless, right?], darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. [a Big Bang of light, if you will]

The plane thoery might be right and then agian it might be wrong, however your god- thoery can NEVER be proven right or wrong. So unless you have an experiment that can prove (or disprove) god’s existance. Then science stays out of the Science classrooms.

OK, I reject that God can NEVER be proven right or wrong. First off, as a Christian, I believe that Jesus will return to earth one day to take his followers to Heaven to see God. I believe as the Bible says that the dead in Christ will rise first (literally from their graves), then those alive will be caught up in the air to meet him.

I’ll humor you and say IF that happens, I’d say that my “theory” is pretty well proven, right?

Now humor me and give me something that IF it happens will prove the Big Bang Theory — maybe an alien-produced recording or something (I’m not being rude here, that’s the only thing my mind can conceive that would prove the Big Bang). Oh, and by the way, if you ever get that recording, then prove that it wasn’t God who caused it.

SUMMARY: All I am saying here is this:

a) You believe in something that cannot be proven (the Big Bang)
b) I believe in something that you say cannot be proven (God)

Why is your “theory” OK to teach in schools but the ACLU kind of has a problem with mine? I believe that “someone” created the known Universe.

And don’t give me the “separation of church and state” argument unless you tell me where to find it in the Constitution.

TD

I did not think there would be a retort, TD…you probably have in running at this point.

Hi, guys. Interesting little discussion going on in here.

Actually, the scientists at ICR are doing all kinds of scientific experiments with regard to Noah’s flood and other biblical stories. Deposits in Geological strata indicate that the bulk of earth’s sedimentary rock accumulated rapidly beneath the waters of the great Flood of Noah’s day. One layer followed another in swift succession, sometimes interrupted by brief periods of quiescence, uplift, and erosion. Some time may have passed between depositional events, but these periods were not long, and the bulk of the sedimentary rock record may represent hardly more than one year.

What this proves is–the earth is YOUNG and not BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD, as the evolutionists claim.

Evolutionary naturalism has become a worldview and is unquestioningly used by its adherents in their interpretation of data. But what it also does is exclude any line of thinking that might have something to do with a higher being–or some kind of intelligent design.

What Terry said is correct; Intelligent Design isn’t Creationism. Intelligent Design doesn’t go so far as to assume, as the creationist scientists do, that the Bible is correct and then go out into the scientific world to demonstrate why that is so.

Intelligent Design merely assumes that we are “designs” rather than “occurrences”.

There is indeed much evidence of design in nature and God’s Word frequently refers to it. “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made . . . so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

E.g., those who refuse to see the evidence of God’s handiwork in the things He made are inexcusable. One does not have to be an engineer or a probability mathematician to see that the animals and plants of the world—not to mention the stars in the heavens and the very laws of nature themselves—could never have evolved out of primeval nothingness or one single cell like a glob of jellO. Evolutionists think that, if they can even imagine how things might have organized themselves into higher levels of complexity, that is sufficient proof that it must have happened! That’s not very scientific, though, is it?

Furthermore, the origins issue is mainly a historical question, not merely one related to the complexity of organisms. Not “could it happen?” but “did it happen?” The historical evidence for Creation and the Flood—and against evolution—especially as recorded in the Word of God, is so strong that the apostle Peter calls it willful ignorance not to accept it! (II Peter 3:3-6).

As far as the organized complexity of any living thing is concerned, the ancient challenge of Job is still relevant. “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?” (Job 12:7-9).

A school child can easily tell a round-ed stone from a crafted arrowhead—one shaped by natural forces, the other by skilled human hands. Just so, the incredible organized complexity of even the simplest one-celled organism speaks clearly of intelligent design, and one should not need sophisticated rhetoric or math to recognize this.

If it is shameful to think sticks and stones can generate life, is it not just as irrational to attribute it to rocks and minerals?

And I do realize that we’re supposed to be discussing ID here versus Evolution, but honestly, Evolution is a ridiculous theory from the 1800’s that Hitler believed in–in order to put people on the same plane as animals, which lead to the holocaust. Evolution is a dangerous ideology without a creator and led to horrible atrocities like euthanasia and jews being shoved into ovens.

Evolution seems to go hand in hand with the communist/nazi ideology and not coincidentally, out goes humanity, compassion, love for your fellow man, humility, morality, protection of the innocent in society and many of the traits that seem to be inherent in Christians.

I oppose the theory of evolution because of the horror it has brought to other nations and people like myself; not just because it’s an antiquated theory that stands on circus sideshow acts like Piltdown Man’s skull (the combination of a human skull and the jawbone of an orangutan with its teeth filed down to appear human), 4-winged fruit flies, speckled moths, etc.-which have all been thoroughly debunked. There is no science to back up evolutionists’ claims, that’s why they keep circulating the same old lies in text books.

Evolution has not been proved by science. Science is based on observability and repeatability but there is no recorded example of true macroevolution in all the thousands of years of human history. That in itself is proof that it is unscientific. Furthermore, there is no way to test it. No matter what kind of evidence for creation is presented, evolutionists can devise an evolutionary “just-so-story” to explain it away.

In the case of evolution, even though it’s been proven to be false; its adherents ignore the evidence and forge ahead because the alternative is something they absolutely will not allow.

This is like sticking to the idea that the world is flat. C’mon, guys, the theory of Evolution is a Victorian-age theory–which has been disproven. Let’s move on.

Scientific minds don’t believe in God or creation? Let’s check it out.

What about Isaac Newton (1642-1727) who discovered the law of gravity, formulated the three laws of motion, developed calculus, constructed the first reflectin telescope and whom many consider the greatest scientist who ever lived?

Newton wrote an estimate 1,400,000 word on religion–more than on physics and astronomy. He wrote papers refuting atheism and defending the Bible. He believed in the Flood, a literal six-day creation, and the Usher chronology (which dated Eart as a few thousand years old.) Here are a few quotes from him;

I have a fundamental belief in the bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

We account the Scriptures of god to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever.”

William Jennings Bryan, for making similar affirmations was depicted as irrational and anti-scentific in “Inherit the Wind”.

How about astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)? Reasoning that the universe must be orderly if designed by God, he discovered the laws of planetary motion and conclusively demonstrated that the sun is the solar system’s center. He explained that he was merely “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” and said:

I had the intention of becoming a theologian–but now I see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy, for “the heavens declare the Glory of God.”

and

Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.

What of Robert Boyle (1627-1691) regarded as the father of modern chemistry, and whose name iswedded to the fundamental law of gas pressures? He determined that gases consist of particles, made early discoveries concerning vacuums, and even invented the first match.

Boyle also read the Bible daily, was governor of a missionary organization wrote “The Christian Virtuoso” to show that studying nature is a religious duty, and in his will established “Boyle lectures” for the proving of Christianity.

Then there was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) credited with developing the scentific method. He said:

There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God, then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.

How about Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) the brilliant French mathematician who developed the science of hydrostatics and helped formualte the laws of probability? From 1658 until his death, he worked on a defense of Christianity. He said:

Except by Jesus Christ we know not what our life is, what our death is, what God is, what we are ourselves. Thus, without Scripture, which has only Jesus Christ for its object, we know nothing, and we see only obscurity and confusion in the nature of God, and in nature himself.”

Now that sounds like something a narrow-minded fundamentalist bigot would say, lol!

And there’s more, but science certainly over the centuries was not overtaken by Evolutionists–like it is now–even by a long shot.

Excellent points, Cao, and thanks for posting!

My entire point is that scientific THEORIES are accepted by FAITH, in EXACTLY the same way that we as Christians accept our beliefs. Yet one is accepted and the other is not.

TD

They exclude the idea of a creator…or even ID which is something less specific.

Most scientists in Darwin’s time weren’t thrilled with his theory, either. Contrary to the demonizing-anyone-who-believes-in-God impression that guys like ‘bob’ perpetrate today as a sort of revisionist history and a sad state of affairs in the present-it was scientists–not theologians–who primarily opposed evolution in the nineteenth century.

Since evolution by definition always results in improvement and advancement, all of man’s violent, lustful and selfish drives are perfectly normal and natural…and advanced. There is no good and evil, no Heaven and Hell, and man, as a highly evolved monkey, has no sin and no guilt–as these are logical impossibilities from the evolutionary point of view.

What I can’t get over is –the difference between someone who believes in Intelligent Design walking out his door, listening to the birds, watching the bees pollenate flowers, the ants clean up a piece of bread on the sidewalk—which to me indicates the beauty and forethought of a Higher Being–a creator, if you will—and the guy who doesn’t believe walking out his door looking at everything as having gotten here by “chance” and thousands of years of mutation from one minute glob of JellO.

The fact that nature, species, plants and animals are fully interdependent doesn’t seem to enter into these peoples’ minds.

Wow, I’ll tell you one thing: you guys leave no stone unturned.
That is a whole lot of stuff.

I don’t have time right now to respond to it all (I’ll try and post more later) but I’d like to debate this one point that you (I mean TD) brings against my god-cannot-be-proven-because-god-would-cease-to-be-god theory.

The unknown is fearful to us petty humans. What we don’t know and don’t understand simply terrifies us (read up on the ‘mystery’ element of gothic fiction and you’ll know what i mean more clearly). What we don’t know about cannot be defined, and if we can’t define it, then we definitely cannot control it. We fear what we cannot control because in its lack of control it exerts enormous power over us. In a gothic novel we fear (or at least we are supposed to fear) the vampire, the werewolf or the psychotic serial killer. The reason for this fear in because we do not understand these characters. The thing that makes the serial murderer so scary is not the fact that he has killed people (and will kill more people) it is the fact that we cannot understand WHY he kills. The lack of motive and seeming lack of reason terrifies us because we cannot identify it. We cannot classify it and we cannot control it.

This is demonstrated through the ways that Europeans colonized America and even how Europeans colonized Africa and other parts of Europe. (I don’t mean to stereotype all Europeans as imperialists; every world power that has ever colonized anywhere does basically the same things in this sense.)
The first thing a successful colonizer must do is arm himself with knowledge of the native people he (or she) desires to colonize. Knowledge is power. When The Spanish first arrived in the America’s they had no idea what do about the native people. Later, as they dug in more they began to understand the native ways and the native culture, which told them precisely how they could tear it down.
A textbook example of this sort of colonialism would be Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt. Napoleon didn’t just send soldiers with guns to conquer Egypt, He sent archeologists, botanists, and basically an army of scientists of all kinds to put the Egyptian culture under a microscope.
So we have concluded that knowledge is power and lack of knowledge consequently equals a lack of power.

God (assuming for a moment that he exists) is, at the moment, pretty ambiguous. We really can’t tell all that much about god. The reason for this explained by philosophers is that god is so incredibly amazingly powerful that we puny humans are simply incapable of understanding him at all. This maybe true, however the way god evades our definition, in much the same way that the serial killer avoids our definition (Not that I’m accusing god of being a serial killer!). We cannot pin down god and define him. We cannot analyze him and find the pins and gears that make him work. These things are impossible because so much about him is unknown to us. (If you claim to know these answers then explain them too me, and not ‘jesus is in my heart and that’s all the proof I need’ I’m sorry, but I need a little more than that.)
So we’ve accepted that god is for the moist part pretty ambigouse and it is through this ambiguity that god gains a lot of his power within our minds Right? (Probably not, but for arguments sake I shall continue.)
So what happens when you have real solid proof of god? What happens when you can finally tear away at the façade and see the wonders within? What if you could see and understand how god worked? Well, you can imagine the consequences. God would lose incredible amounts of power within our minds. When we can define god and ut him under a microscope he loses his power of his ambiguity. He would, in the end, cease to be god.
And of course (as entertaining as it is) I hardly think that god will be destroyed. And thus it follows that it is impossible to prove that there is a god (through scientific means, Remember, we are debating on religion invading science. Religion has to play by scientific rules if it wants to compete. Or at least be taken seriously.)
So god’s existence CANNOT be proven. Whereas the big bangs existence CAN be proven, even if it is not proven yet. At any rate there is EVIDENCE for the big bang and no evidence for god.

On a lighter note, I appreciate your civility TD, I enjoy a good debate that does not automatically degrade into a shouting match. When I posted stuff on the stoptheaclu.com website I was often criticized as an ‘Islamo-facist’. Ironic because I am not Islamic and I detest fascism.

TD, are you serious about this? Come on man. You said that:
1. don’t know how old you are, but are you married? Do you have children? Parents whom you love? How can you look at them and deny the existence of God? How can you see the wonders that nature produces — sunsets, beautiful mountains, stormy oceans, rain showers, rainbows, a starlit night — and deny that such beauty is the work of a Creator? Do you honestly believe that all of this came about without a purpose — that it just happened? Isn’t the very existence of humans, animals, plants, and other matter in our world “concrete proof” of a God?
I could never look my wife in the face and deny that God created her. That’s all the “concrete evidence” I need.
You know as well as I do that this proves absolutely nothing. It is an emotive argument and the premises that you base your argument on can EASILY be argued or refuted.

Far all you know I may hate the world, hate my wife and my parents and the rest of the world. Indeed I could argue that because the world is so ugly and horrible it is direct evidence that there is NOT a creator. Otherwise, I could reason, that if their WAS a creator then the world would be a whole heck of a lot better.

I don’t mean to diss your god or your wife or your religion or the beauty that you see in the natural world but his argument holds absolutely no water.

Even if I accepted all of your premises what is to change my mind from believing that it is all naturally accruing? Some random desire for a leader of the world or somthing? sorry but that doesn’t convince me.

to the dude that talked about the ICR heres somthing about them.

“ICR prohibits academic freedom for its members. Staff at the Institute are not allowed to espouse anything that might contradict the basic dogma of the creation science model. To join, each scientist must sign a pledge professing adherence to several major tenets. These tenets include the factual and historical integrity of the Bible and the sudden creation of every living creature during the six-day Genesis creation week (Nelkin 1982).”

The only people that they allow to work with them are already christian creationalists! Wow talk about scientific Bias!

If these guys want to try to appear at least partially credible they should at least stop trying to prove things with quotes from the bible.

If you are good enough, and smart enough, you can probebly prove ANYTHING with quotes from the bible! Heck I’ve read passages from the bible that promote TORTURE GENOCIDE SLAVERY and RAPE!

One quote from the bible “He sitteth upon the crcle of the earth” (I forget the chapter and stuff) was used to prove that the earth was flat. Later the EXACT SAME VERSE was used by the opposition to prove that the earth was round.

please, If you want to be taken seriousely AT LEAST get rid of the biblical quotes.

Cao said:

“The fact that nature, species, plants and animals are fully interdependent doesn’t seem to enter into these peoples’ minds.”

Of course it enters our minds! Think about this carefully. (I assume you know a little about evolution) For arguments sake momentarily accept that evolution is genuine. Does it make any sense AT ALL for species to evolve completely alone and independently? Come on people! Organisms are contantly competeing for resources for food for energy for everything. If an animal poops without fully digesting its food it makes perfect sense for another animal to make use of that food. Some organisms even EAT EACH OTHER! You think that god just sudden;y decided, “hey lets make a food chain, just for the heck of it!” Of course not! organisms need a constant supply of energy and if they can get it by eating smaller fish then THEY WILL!

You think that the ants that eath the bread that you discarded in your compost do so simply because it preforms a service to YOU?!?!?

If so then why didn;t god invent any animals to eat stuff like heavy metals tand other pollutants that run through our waterways. Why arent thier fish that drink oil to clean up the oil spill? Why don’t birds breath toxic smog?

Get real. This has got to be the one of the most absurd arguments agianst evolution that I have ever heard.

Cao said:

“I oppose the theory of evolution because of the horror it has brought to other nations and people like myself”

Thats like saying that I oppose christianity because of the thousands of people who died because of it in the holocoust, in the crusades, in northern ireland, In south america where indiens were forsced to convert of else be tortured to death. I could name alot of atrocieties committed in the name of christianity.

But It is just stupid to oppose somthing purely on those grounds. I don’t oppose christianity, true I belive that it is dangerouse and should be watched carefully and I myself do not belive in it but that is no reson for me to go around burning churches.

Cao said:

“Science is based on observability and repeatability but there is no recorded example of true macroevolution in all the thousands of years of human history.”

Ahh, but you belive in micro evolution then right? And where do you draw the barrier between micro-evolution and’macro’ evolution? If you belive in only why is it so difficult to accept that the other is possible?

Cao said:

“Evolution seems to go hand in hand with the communist/nazi ideology and not coincidentally, out goes humanity, compassion, love for your fellow man, humility, morality, protection of the innocent in society and many of the traits that seem to be inherent in Christians.”

Communist/Nazi ideology?!? Are you aware that these two are complete opposites?

Nazi ideology seeks to morph big buiseness and big government into one dominating totalitarian state. The rich run the country and the poor do the work.

Communist ideology, on the other hand, seeks economic equality for all. Everyone contributes to help everyone else. The government is SUPPOSED to be weak and eventually deteriorate after the people themselves take on the governmental responsibilities. Unfortuantely what (almost) always happens is that the people in charge of the government get greedy and sell out the revolution making deals with thier former enemies to help to subjagate thier own people. If youve ever read the book ‘animal farm’ then you know what i mean.

I know that im getting off topic but oh well.

Im always incredibly surprised at how communism is portrayed as a sort of satani-aithiest ideology that somehow threatens christianity. I was raised in a christian household and went to church on every sunday. Needless to say, christianity ifluenced me ALOT even im I no longer continues to practice the religion. I always loved the things that jesus preached about selflessness and about helping the poor. Jesu, at least to me it seemed, preached that everyone should take care of one another to make the world a better place for us all. To be a servant to society was, in christes (once agian pardon the spelling) view, the most noble thing one could do. I belived this suff, and continue to belive this stuff, which is why I sympathize with the communist cause. Socialism, it seemes to me, it the very thing that jesus was talking about. Every one should be a servant to serve each other so that everyone would benefit.

sorry, but my I have got to be going I know that I havent responed to all of your points but I will make an effort to do so.

“On a lighter note, I appreciate your civility TD, I enjoy a good debate that does not automatically degrade into a shouting match. When I posted stuff on the stoptheaclu.com website I was often criticized as an ‘Islamo-facist’. Ironic because I am not Islamic and I detest fascism.”

Yeah, Bob, I love a good respectful debate. It’s even in my Comments policy, that’s why I moderate comments. Not to turn away a disagreement, as you can see, but to make sure that it’s at least attempting to be reasonable and logical.

OK, you covered a lot of ground. For the sake of time (mine!) I’ll leave the responses you made to others alone (unless I see something that really intrigues me), and attempt to handle those comments directed at what I’ve written.

“These things are impossible because so much about him is unknown to us.”

The only analogy that I can use to explain the unknown things of God is that of a small child and his parents. I remember way back into my youth when I was 3 or 4 (images, feelings, little incidents), my dad wasn’t around during the day until late in the afternoon. In my mind, he only came home at night, and didn’t stay long. I was asleep when he left for work at 4:00 AM, and didn’t see him until after my afternoon nap. In my mind, I couldn’t conceive that he had a job. I didn’t know what he did when he wasn’t there, because he “disappeared”. His existence centered around the times that I saw him, as it would with any young child.

In my opinion, that’s the way it is with humans and God. There are things that we cannot conceive about God because we don’t have the capacity to perceive Him as He really is. His being and thoughts and ways are so far beyond us that He had to divide himself (not literally) into three pieces so that we could understand Him better.

“(If you claim to know these answers then explain them too me, and not ‘jesus is in my heart and that’s all the proof I need’ I’m sorry, but I need a little more than that.)”

I understand what you’re saying about the “unknown” things, but you’re looking at it from the point of view of someone who doesn’t believe in God and probably doesn’t want to (my assumption). Even in your arguments, you’re making the assumption that God is a creation of humans to fill a void, or explain an irrational fear. We’ve created Him, and getting to a point where we don’t need him would “kill” Him, on an individual basis, at least — as you said, there will always be those who believe. Is that the argument you were making? If so, then as an argument it is not very scientific because you’re automatically starting out with an assumption.

You’re using science as your infallible “God” to attempt to disprove the existence of an entity which may or may not exist as something that even CAN be defined by science. You mentioned in an earlier comment about “parallel planes”. Yet there is no more SOLID EVIDENCE that these planes exist than there is (to you, anyway) that GOD exists. Yet because one is science and the other is not, you accept one and reject the other.

I can also understand about your needing more, but again, that’s from the point of view of someone who has already made up his mind. I HAVEN’T made up my mind about the Big Bang, it could very well have happened, I suppose. My argument in that area was not that it might not be true, but that it couldn’t be PROVEN to be true.

As far as Jesus living in my heart, if you knew how real He is, you too would believe that that was all the argument that was needed. You seem like you try to be a reasonable individual, and as much as I’d like to share that part of my life with you, I’m pretty sure you’re not interested. However, what would it hurt to say, “OK, God, I don’t believe You exist, and can’t believe that I’m talking to someone who DOESN’T exist, but if You’re there and can prove otherwise, I’m willing to listen.” Mean it when you say it. Look at it as a scientific experiment, and scientists always keep their eyes open and their assumptions in check.

If you’re right that God doesn’t exist, what have you lost? But if you’re wrong, you’ll have your proof — a proof that I can’t give you. He’s in MY heart, after all, LOL. Oh, and by the way, scientific experiments aren’t one-shot deals, as you know. Just maintain the attitude, wait, and see what (if anything) happens.

“So we’ve accepted that god is for the moist part pretty ambigouse and it is through this ambiguity that god gains a lot of his power within our minds Right? (Probably not, but for arguments sake I shall continue.)”

LOL, good idea.

“So what happens when you have real solid proof of god? What happens when you can finally tear away at the façade and see the wonders within? What if you could see and understand how god worked? Well, you can imagine the consequences. God would lose incredible amounts of power within our minds. When we can define god and ut him under a microscope he loses his power of his ambiguity. He would, in the end, cease to be god.”

Therein lies the difference in our arguments and beliefs. You say He’s ambiguous and that we need that ambiguity because losing it would destroy God. Defining and understanding Him would cause Him to lose his “mystique”, if I understand you correctly.

I say we’re not capable of understanding His vastness, and if we were then I’m pretty sure that it would only convince me even more that He’s exactly as big a God as He claims to be.

“And of course (as entertaining as it is) I hardly think that god will be destroyed. And thus it follows that it is impossible to prove that there is a god (through scientific means, Remember, we are debating on religion invading science. Religion has to play by scientific rules if it wants to compete. Or at least be taken seriously.)”

EXCUSE MOI??? “Religion has to play by scientific rules?”

OK, I’ve got one for you: I’m Al Gore, it’s the year 2000, and I only want the votes recounted in heavily Democratic counties in Florida. George W has to play by my rules if he wants to be taken seriously!”

Here’s another: “I’m a Liberal, and I can’t win at the ballot box, so I make sure we put Judges in place who will interpret the Constitution the way that I want it interpreted, NOT according to how it was written. And I believe that field goals and extra points should be allowed in Baseball.”

Who made the god Science master over the God Jehovah? Are you serious, man? Do you know how many SCIENTISTS are practicing Christians, and believe in the Word of God? What about them? They KNOW science, after all, right? They should be bigger skeptics than anyone if what you say is true.

“So god’s existence CANNOT be proven. Whereas the big bangs existence CAN be proven, even if it is not proven yet. At any rate there is EVIDENCE for the big bang and no evidence for god.”

Sorry, man, but remember me quoting NASA in my video? Even they say, “Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, IT PROBABLY WILL NEVER BE PROVED; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions” (emphasis mine). And again, we’re here, aren’t we? It’s at the foundation of what each of us believe, you and I, but I can’t look around at the diversity of life and credit it to anything less than a Creator.

Stop and think about this for a minute. You’re saying that out of one “Big Bang”, SOMEHOW, SOMETHING — some chemicals, proteins, amino acids, SOMETHING — got coincidentally thrown together to create SOME FORM of life. And that from this ACCIDENT of matter — which I have yet to hear an explanation of how it happened to exist before the BB, except for the spurious “parallel planes”, ALL LIFE, the millions, perhaps BILLIONS of types of plants, insects, fish, fowl, mammals, EVERY LIFE FORM developed from this cosmic happenstance?

Yes or No, is that what you’re saying?

On my arguments for looking around at your loved ones and nature, perhaps they CAN be argued, but if they can be DISPROVEN, I invite you to do so.

Getting to your argument, you didn’t answer my question. DO you have family, and DO you love them, and they you? And when you look at them, all you see is a happenstance rather than someone created just for you (your wife), from you (your children), or that you’re a creation of (your parents)?

OK, what about those who see the ugliness in the world? Ever heard of Satan? He’s in the same book that introduced us to God. Why does God allow all this, you ask? Well, it wasn’t his original plan. He created man with FREE WILL.

I assume that if you’re married, you don’t keep your wife chained in the basement, right (be aware that a positive answer would invoke a police investigation — JUST KIDDING!)? She loves you because she WANTS to? That’s what God wanted with us, but He couldn’t have it without giving us free will, and if free will is truly free, then we’re free to create ugliness. I just happen to believe that He gave us a way out of it. Do bad things still happen? Sure. Do you still believe in the Big Bang even though it’s not been proven? Sure. Faith. That’s all, just faith.

On your comments to Cao, “please, If you want to be taken seriousely AT LEAST get rid of the biblical quotes.”

Come on man, get real. If YOU want to be taken seriously, get rid of any THEORY that hasn’t been proven (and THEORIES, by definition, are ALWAYS unproven). I won’t ask you to do that if you’ll retract your statement about the Bible. Whatever your personal beliefs are, there are a slew of people smarter than you and I who DO believe in the Bible.

I’ll grant that it has been misused by many a misguided individual in a quest for whatever they were after, but my friend, it has also been used to lighten the load of many an individual who were at the end of their rope.

Don’t believe it if you want to, but if you don’t respect those who do, you’re not as smart as I had originally given you credit for being.

On another comment to Cao, “Socialism, it seemes to me, it the very thing that jesus was talking about. Every one should be a servant to serve each other so that everyone would benefit.”

Everyone being a servant is NOT socialism, my friend. Being a servant is the FREE WILL (heard that one before) of each individual. You’re right, Jesus wants us to take care of the poor. But NOT ONCE did he ever say, “Hey, Bob, go get TD’s money and give it to so and so.” It is a PERSONAL choice and a PERSONAL commitment. If he wants me to be a servant, how can I do so if YOU’RE making me (you in the socialistic sense, not you personally). That’s not servanthood, it’s slavery. And if you’re taking my money to profit the poor, how am I doing what God wanted, if I have no choice in the matter.

And please name me a few socialistic countries that didn’t end up ruled by dictators. Again, they didn’t enforce servanthood, they enforced human bondage.

I hope that you will rethink that Jesus and Socialism stuff, you are dead wrong. Period.

Again, Bob, thanks for posting, even if you DID cause my eyes to cross with the sheer volume of it all!

TD

It seems to me as though we are moving along the same wavelenths only we are on opposite sides of the spectrum concerning the’ambiguity of god’ thing.

You said that god is to us like a small child is to its parents. But this is EXACTLY what I was trying to get at. Your parents (I’m now pretrending that we are both three) are powerfull, intelligent and mysteriouse. YOu don’t know where your dad goes and so you assume that he just dissapears.

But what about when you grew up and got older? We’ll Im assuming that your parents lost alot of that power and mystigue that they held over you. YOU could begin to see your parents as equals, as people who had thier own unigue strenths and weaknesses.

So in a sense, your parents ARE like gods when you are three years old. BUt after you learn about them and gain the ability to define them and label them as people they lose their ‘god-like’ abilities.

What I am argueing is essentially that god is alot like our parents. If god allows us to grow and learn then god will inevitably lose his godly abilities.

What I said about religion must play by the rules of science refers to the fact that this is about religion (ID) infiltrating science class not the other way around. You cant prove religion useing religion. Its a contradiction. Its like saying, “Belive in god, because the bible says so”

A consistant theme in yours (and others) posts seems to be that scientists can also be christians. I do not refute this, many prominent scientists have been chistians INCLUDING the infamos (well, I assume in your opinion he is infamos. I kind of like him) CHARLES DARWIN. True darwin eventually abandoned his christain beliefs when he was confronted with what he considered to be irrifutable evidence but he remained unsure of the truth dealing between Athiesm and theism.

So what did darwin do? Niether side, either for god or agianst god, had any proof of any kind so he chose niether side and became an agnostic.

It really doen’t bother me in the slightest if you happen to be a christian (I would say a slight majority of my friends are christian) or if you happen to be a scientist or even a scientist who happens to be a christian also. What bothers me is when people try to fuse the two together into one.

Science is, at the core, very very different from philosiphy (haha my bad spelling agian eh?) and when you try and mold science to fit religion incredible damage is done to both science AND religion.

I know that since I am one of those dreaded ‘evolutionists’ you assume me to be an athiest, however this is not true. I, like darwin, attempt to niether prove OR disprove religion. There very well could be a god, ie one whose existance is impossible to prove, however for the moment I don’t think that the evidence is in god’s favor. Of course this can always change. Perhapes tomarrow I will find some breathtaking piece of evidence that will sway be further toward the god camp.

As for socialism what i meant is that jesus’s utopian world would be ‘anarchro-communist’ (you don’t like the word socialism so I’ve found a new one) everyone SHOULD (Im talking volentary communalisation like happened during the rural areas of spain during the spainish civil war) help one another even if everybody doesn’t.

sorry if this is a bit confusing, I don’t have time to proofread right now. Cherrio TD!

Hey, is thier any reason that my other comment about macro evolution hasn’t been submitted let? just wondering.

I wanted to reply here as well as e-mail, just to let folks know. I’ve approved all comments. If you posted one that didn’t show up, I don’t think I did this, but I suppose that it’s POSSIBLE that I accidentally deleted it. Please feel free to repost, and I hope for your sake it wasn’t a long one! I apologize!

I’m going to post a response at my blog.

Discussion on evolution, i.d., creationism, from right track blog

Bob, Terry Dillard and I were getting into a very interesting discussion over at the Right Track blog and I thought I’d print up my responses to his comments over here, since the comments were getting rather lengthy…and I wasn’t sure…

The creationist scientists are using Biblical verse and science to back it up.

What you’re saying up there is a little ridiculous. Here’s why.

What evolutionists are doing is discounting much of the new science that has entered the public arena since the Victorian age, such as genetics, for example.

Genetics was not developed as a science in Darwin’s day, and he assumed animals essentially had an unlimited capacity to adapt to environments.

He wrote:

By this process long continued…it seems to me almost certain that an ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe.

In other words, Darwin believed you could take, say, donkeys, and if you put them in the right environment, they could, given enough time, become giraffes. This simply is not true. Even millions of years in the jungle, donkeys would still be donkeys, because they only have donkey genes.

But modern evolutionists, to resolve this “dilemma”, assert that fish’s genes must have mutated into human genes over eons–mutations, of course, are abrupt alterations in genes. They generally occur only very rarely. According to evolutionary theory, an organism develops some new positive characteristic through a mutation, better adapting to the environment. The creature then passes this mutated trait on to the next generation, and eventually, it spreads through the whole species. Organisms without the trait, being weaker, die out (survival of the “fittest”). Through this process, fish gradually evolved into men.

But this hypothesis no longer holds up. Dr. Lee Spetner, who taught information theory for a decade at Johns Hopkins University and the Weizman Institute, spent years studying mutations. He has a book out called “Not by Chance: Shattering The Modern Theory of Evolution”. In it, he writes:

“In all the reading I’ve done in the life-sciences literature, I’ve never found a mutation that added information…All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.”

Mutations DELETE information from the genetic code. They NEVER create higher, more complex information. What are they actually observed to cause in human beings? Death. Sterility. Down’s syndrome. Sickle Cell Anemia. Cystic Fybrosis. Hemophilia. And over 4,000 other diseases. The genetic code is designed to run an organism perfectly–mutations delete information from the code, causing birth defects.

In recent years, growing scientific evidence has arisen that challenges the theory of evolution. Darwinism is important to know about because of its unique social consequences. Until the nineteenth century, the view almost universally accepted in the West was that God had created the world and man. Society, in turn, was largely structured on values laid out in the Bible.

Darwin’s theory said something dramatically different: That man was not created by God, but evolved from ape-like ancestors, and that life itself was not created by God, but happened because the right chemicals came together by chance in the ancient ocean. After publication of the Origin of the Species in 1859, Darwinian ideas began replacing religious ideas until evolution itself became the prevailing view.

This, however, took a long time. If you look in the not-too-distant past, the Bible was taught in our public schools until the ‘60’s and prayers were said in classrooms every single day.

Now it is true that some people tried to make their religious beliefs compatible with evolution—they’d say something like “Well, maybe God created life, through chance and evolution.” But for many, Darwin’s theory put God out of the picture—he was irrelevant, or didn’t exist. Julian Huxley, one of evolution’s foremost spokesmen during the twentieth century, states that “Darwinism removed the whole idea of god as the Creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.” And that’s how many people saw it. In fact, evolution has produced a lot of atheists.

Joseph Stalin murdered millions of people, and in 1940, a book was published in Moscow entitled Landmarks in the Life of Stalin. It states:

At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became and atheist.

“Darwin. You must read it”, Joseph impressed on me.

High-school textbooks represent the worst of evolution education, rehearsing long-disproved evidences such as the peppered moth, vestigial organs, and mutated fruit flies. Only a small minority of Americans holds this “evolution only” view, and even most biology teachers suspect there’s more to the story. Unfortunately decades of “evolution only” teaching have produced a generation of teachers that only know evolution. Evidence contrary to evolution, and/or supportive of creation, has been censored. This brainwashed mentality has spilled over into legal education (producing evolution-supporting lawmakers, school board counsel, etc.) and into journalism school (yielding similar reporters, newscasters, etc.) each deeply believing that evolution is fact and creation is irrelevant to science. The opposition is quite strong and well entrenched.

ID experts are scrupulously secular, and their proposals are neither Christian nor creationist.

Hey Cao,

I read your blog but for some reason your blog wont let me add comments so I’ll just respond here.

Is racism bias? Of course it is. But it is not bias that would influence darwins theory of evolution. Think about it, If you happen to be rasict towards african americans you ould simply belive that god created blacks as naturally subservient people (a belief many people had and, unfortunately, still have today)
If you belive that blacks (or mexicans or chinese or anybody) are naturally of a lower class then it really makes no difference whether you belive that god natuarlly created them as lower people or if they evolved as lower peopple.

test

I’m sorry I took so long to reply, I just completed a major project at work that consumed a lot of my time. OK, onward!

You said that god is to us like a small child is to its parents. But this is EXACTLY what I was trying to get at. Your parents (I’m now pretrending that we are both three) are powerfull, intelligent and mysteriouse. YOu don’t know where your dad goes and so you assume that he just dissapears.

What I am argueing is essentially that god is alot like our parents. If god allows us to grow and learn then god will inevitably lose his godly abilities.

I understand exactly what you’re saying, but you’re coming at it from the point of God being a fallacy, and I’m coming at it from the point of God being real. As human, my belief is that we can never, ever understand everything there is to know about God. We can’t even understand enough of him to use the analogy of children growing up — we simply can’t grow so much that God would lose His deity, or His holiness.

As one who has a Master’s in Counseling, I totally understand how humans — especially Christians — tend to see God in the same manner as they see their fathers. If one’s father was distant, they tend to see God that way. If the father gave them material good without the attendant love, affection, and time necessary for children, they can see God as someone whose sole purpose is to grant “favors”.

However, this doesn’t negate the fact that God is real. You said earlier that I had offered an “emotive” argument. Well how can we be complete as humans without using all the “parts” that we are given? How many scientists do you think went with their gut instinct on something, and ended up being right?

Can we distill love into science? Can we distill our core beliefs into science? You might could explain the physiology of it scientifically, but not the why of it.

What I said about religion must play by the rules of science refers to the fact that this is about religion (ID) infiltrating science class not the other way around. You cant prove religion useing religion. Its a contradiction. Its like saying, “Belive in god, because the bible says so”

That misses the basis of the argument. There is nothing Constitutionally that disallows the teaching of ID in the classroom. Again, you’re allowing science to make the rules (because it must be true, because it’s science), and disallowing ID, even though there is a scientific theory that attempts to explain it. You’re advancing one theory over another for no other reason than you believe the first but not the second. How intellectually dishonest is that? You say that I can’t prove religion by using religion, but what are you doing with science?

My understanding of what you’re saying with that statement is “Science was here first, it’s king of the hill, so to speak, and it gets to make the rules”. The only problem with that argument is that when this country was founded, religion was the king of the hill in the classroom, then science came along and using its own rules attempted to usurp religion’s authority in the classroom, eventually succeeding. Hmmmm, rules change, huh?

It really doen’t bother me in the slightest if you happen to be a christian (I would say a slight majority of my friends are christian) or if you happen to be a scientist or even a scientist who happens to be a christian also. What bothers me is when people try to fuse the two together into one.

But you’re assuming that ID is religion. Stretch your imagination a bit, I’m sure somebody did that in developing the Big Bang theory. I’m not saying it’s wrong but that somebody had to imagine it first. Now, are you telling me that you cannot even imagine a Creator of the universe? It’s funny, because I can’t imagine anything else, and I’m a pretty smart (although fallible, I’ll admit!) dude.

Science is, at the core, very very different from philosiphy (haha my bad spelling agian eh?) and when you try and mold science to fit religion incredible damage is done to both science AND religion.

Whatever it’s called, my argument in the video post dealt with the ACLU saying that it would defend both freedom of and freedom from religion, then stating that it would fight ID in the classroom, a clear preference for the from camp. It’s not so much that I want it taught in the classroom (although I do want that in part), but my original argument was to point out the hypocrisy of the ACLU.

As for socialism what i meant is that jesus’s utopian world would be ‘anarchro-communist’ (you don’t like the word socialism so I’ve found a new one) everyone SHOULD (Im talking volentary communalisation like happened during the rural areas of spain during the spainish civil war) help one another even if everybody doesn’t.

I can see why you would think that, after all, the book of Acts speaks that way of the belivers, that they had “all things in common”. Perhaps it’s a knee-jerk reaction on my part to the words, but after a little thought, I really tend to believe that Jesus wouldn’t define it that way. While the Christians in the early church did that, it seems much more evident through examination that the focus was on the individual. Perhaps it’s just a way of looking at it. You look at it from a “collective” standpoint (at least this is my understanding of your views), while I look at it as individuals making individual decisions. It might just be the stigma that has become associated (rightly, I think) with the word communism, but overall I can’t get away from the fact that Jesus wanted us to live a certain way, but to make our own decisions — and take ultimate responsibility them.

TD

TD said:

“I understand exactly what you’re saying, but you’re coming at it from the point of God being a fallacy, and I’m coming at it from the point of God being real. As human, my belief is that we can never, ever understand everything there is to know about God. We can’t even understand enough of him to use the analogy of children growing up — we simply can’t grow so much that God would lose His deity, or His holiness.”

GREAT! It seems that we are both on the same track after all! You say that god is simply to big, and to vast for us to comprehend. God is just so incredibly… (use any adjetive you want right here) for us to fit into our tiny little brains.

This is what you think right?

So, if god is so incredibly big, so vast and so complicated that we can never truely grasp the concept. Then it follows that science will never be able to prove OR disprove gods existance simply because of the limitations of our puny human brains.

If god cannot be proven (or if substanial evidence cannot be compiled for god, which would be practically the same as proving his existance) then god has no place in science.

This does not mean that their is no god, The church does not need to feel threatened by evolution (heck the catholic church seems to love evolution!), it simply means that science cannot accqire evidence or proof for god. And so god stays ot of science and science stays out of god.

You belive that god is too immensely omnipotent for us puny humans to understand, so why are you so persistant in the belief that science will prove god. Scientists are people, nothing more and nothing less, people, you have said, are simply to dumb to grasp the concept and so by your own words science is too dumb to understand god and will ALWAYS be to dumb to understand god.

Evolution might be proven wrong, the big bang theory may be proven wrong, the theory of relativity might be proven wrong, and, on the same token, all three can be proven right. But ID because it utilized God in its self as part of it can NEVER be proven (by science I mean, I respect whatever feelings you have for god in your heart but unfortunately they don’t apply to science) right OR wrong because we have decided that god is too big for us mere mortals to understand.

Don’t you see the damage that this does to science? Evolution has not remained unchanged since darwin created it. It has been modified, corrected and altered by thousands of scientists who trim the blubber from the theory once facts emerge. But ID CANNOT be changed, it cannot be defeated OR proven because science will never truely be able to prove the nature of god.

And its not really the concept of ID that is so dangerouse. It is the fact that god is involved.

Lets say that we take the non-god theory of ID involving little green men from planet X. We can identify these little green men, In the future it may be porssible to prove or disprove their existance. We can analyze them, find out how they work, what they eat etc.

The little green men can be proven, OR they can be disproven. But God can be niether proven nor disproven due to his nature (that we decided upon).

I have no true quarrel with religion; people should be allowed to belive in the god of their choice, in my opinion.

But I care deeply about science and I view the attempts to meld science to religion as incredibly dangerouse for the sake of science.

TD said,

However, this doesn’t negate the fact that God is real. You said earlier that I had offered an “emotive” argument.

What I meant by emotive argument was that the arguement was designed to arouse (haha maybe thats the wrong word!) emotionally the person on the recieving end.

“How can you belive that we humans such beutifull and complicated creatures were nothing more that a mistake created by chance conditions and manipulated by nothing more that the cold hand of fate.”

This is an example of an emotive arguement. I hope you can see this because im not really the bst at explaining this sort of thing. I think i’ll rip sonthing from the internet.

“Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.”

There, straight from wikipedia. (please don’t contest this definition of the falacy, this is right I just don’t have the time to find a more reliable source. You can check it yourself.)

The argument that I invented above and your argument appeal to the fact that it is much more appealing to belive that thier is a purpose to life and a god rather than chaos and athiesm.

Cao moved the discussion to her blog in order to kill it. She moderates out comments that refute her claims. The discussion will have to continue here.

In response to Cao’s comment of 10/16:

Four-winged fruitflies, piltdown man, speckled moths, etc.

Cite your specific objections to fruit flies and speckled moths.

No modern textbook uses “piltdown man” as evidence of evolution. If you were told that, you were lied to.

Science is supposed to examine the available evidence, postulate theories, critique those theories, revise the theories, etc., to arrive at reasonable answers. When someone finds a flaw in a scientific theory, the theory is supposed to be withdrawn & revised.

And you were challenged to point out an example of a creationist doing just that: revising the theory in the face of new evidence. To no one’s surprise, you’ve ignored that challenge.

Where ideas have not been discredited (as in Haeckel’s embryos and vestigial organs), we have seen that they rest on assumptions rather than observations.

Citations, please. Make specific claims, so that they can be specifically discussed and refuted.

Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature.

False. Speciation, for instance, has been observed.

Haven’t you read any of the research papers at ICR discrediting Radiocarbon dating?

Radiocarbon dating holds up very well, thank you. See CD001 and the creationist claims that follow.

I have made no mistake, lol… I just don’t kneel at the Darwinist alter like you apparently do with your head up your ass.

I believe you’ve told us that the genetic fallacy is a bad thing. And here you are using it. Tsk tsk.

Please tell me which of the 400 scientists who’ve signed on to the Statement of Dissent from Darwin in 2001 are creationists.

Please answer the original challenge: document your claim that “ID experts are scrupulously secular”. Changing the topic isn’t an answer to the challenge.

Give me one example of mutations changing the genetic code where there’s an increase in information and not a decrease.

That is no part of the mechanism of evolution. Mutations change genetic information. Period. This straw man of “an increase in information” is a creationist smoke screen. Lose it.

Or, you could tell us how the “mutation = loss” theory explains the existence of mutations that result in additional organs or additional abilities — see the earlier discussion of cats and flu viruses. Go ahead. Explain.

And you’ve completely ignored the question of suboptimal morphology in living organisms. If the facts don’t support the God Hypothesis, it’s better to just pretend that said facts don’t exist, right?

…you’ve just swallowed the socialist propaganda…

Genetic fallacy again. You lose, Cao — by your own rules.

The peppered moth theory has been discredited thoroughly.

Because. Cao. Says. So.

But the facts do not back up that claim. The accusations that Kettlewell perpetrated fraud were long ago disproven. And industrial melanism has been extensively studied since Kettlewell’s time, and holds up to scrutiny.

Science is about the truth, and it neither fears nor suppresses the search for it.

That would, of course, explain the ICR loyalty oath.

TD, why exactly do you claim that scientists “blindly accept” the theory of the Big Bang? Do you understand precisely what scientists mean when they refer to a scientific theory? The word has a very different meaning in that context than it does in everyday life.

Anarchy
“Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.”

And it works both ways, doesn’t it?

“The argument that I invented above and your argument appeal to the fact that it is much more appealing to belive that thier is a purpose to life and a god rather than chaos and athiesm.”

I understood what you meant when you referenced an emotive argument. My point was that in SOME cases, those whose god is science use the same type arguments.

That said, so what? How do you explain that we have “developed” into creatures — the ONLY creatures, by the way — who can appreciate beauty, give and receive various emotions, etc.? How did emotions arise and develop? How did logical, thinking beings, including animals, simply develop without having been created with the ability? You have yet to offer ANY argument that supports this “evolution”, which any statistician will tell you is impossible, anyway.

Let me summarize it this way, once and for all — what is so different from your “faith” in science than my “faith” in a Creator? Forget science, forget religion. What’s the difference in YOUR faith and in MY faith? I’m not talking about the end result, I’m talking about the FACT of it. You believe something you cannot prove, and you say that I do the same. How is that different? That is ALL the argument I’m making, that is the bottom line of my original post. I don’t see how either of us can get past that point.

Gus,
Welcome to The Right Track!

I was using “blindly accept” as a comparative in an attempt to show that their belief in their theory has — from my point of view — no more basis in fact than many scientists claim that my beliefs have. Looking at it from almost 2 weeks later, I wish I had chosen better words, that does seem a little strong for what I was wanting to say. But my original point remains the same.

And yes, I do understand precisely what scientists mean when they refer to a scientific theory. I understand what it takes to go from a hypotheses to a theory. According to Wikipedia, “A theory is an established paradigm that explains all or much of the data we have and offers valid predictions that can be tested. In science, a theory is never considered fact or infallible, because we can never assume we know all there is to know. Instead, theories remain standing until they are disproven, at which point they are thrown out altogether or modified to fit the additional data.”

Does that work for you?

If so, then my original question stands unanswered: (Rephrased using the definition above) How is the faith in something that is “never considered fact or infallible, because we can never assume we know all there is to know” different from (or rather, more valuable than) faith in God?

I understand what goes into developing a theory, and I understand the value placed on scientific research, and how scientists CAN disdain matters of faith. But look solely at the END RESULT, and all you have is an assumption which, by definition, cannot be proven.

TD

How is the faith in something that is “never considered fact or infallible, because we can never assume we know all there is to know” different from (or rather, more valuable than) faith in God?

It’s incorrect to claim that any ‘faith’ is involved when discussing the use of theory in science. Look at the definition you yourself posted: a scientific theory “offers valid predictions that can be tested” and is “thrown out altogether or modified to fit the additional data” when observational results come to light that do not fit the theory. No “faith” is required: Either the theory fits the facts, or it does not. Either the predictions made by the theory test out true, or they do not.

What religion has ever used such a technique to arrive at its version of “truth”? The formulation, use, and revision of scientific theory is the exact opposite of faith. “Faith” requires unwavering belief in a revealed truth. Science requires the willingness to abandon or revise a favored theory whenever the observed data cannot be explained.

This makes science self-correcting. I am not aware of any religious paradigm that can make that claim.

But look solely at the END RESULT, and all you have is an assumption which, by definition, cannot be proven.

Nope. A scientific theory can be tested, and will be revised when found to be lacking. The result will be a theory that fits the facts better than its predecessor. Yours is a common misconception, that science is all about getting to a final result, a “proof”. Science is a process, not a result.

Hmmm, it seems to me that I had to register to comment here. How is it that this Anachy moron is able to comment without having a URL that is real? http:/// isn’t a website.

Next, Anyone with a username Anarchy should be seen as someone who is in the mold of the looters and murderers in New Orleans and unworthy of any attention. Reason, this is the typical apathetic moroic attitude which has led to the degrading of the values systems in this nation.

If anyone has paid any attention to the Intelligent Design trial going on in PA and know of the details of the Scopes trial, you must know that the argument being used by the ACLU and these so-called scientists is the exact claims being used against Evolution. The intolorence of the lefties on this one is just mind blowing. What is wrong with 4 little paragraphs explaining that Evolution is an unproven theory? That others exist and materials are available for the student to investigate on their own? Just like the little stickers in the text books which make no mention of GOD at all. Just alerting students that Evolution is a theory that has not been proven and that other theories exist. No GOD mentioned at all.

This fits into the resoning behind the lack of confidence in public education. It also re-enforces the need for the ability for parents to choose the schools which their children attend. We need vouchers to allow traditional values seeking parents to enroll their children into schools which will teach these values.

/rant

Gribbit, Anarchy is registered, he left a valid e-mail address. I don’t think a web site is required, only a few of my registrants list them. The http:/// must be what WordPress plugs in when you don’t enter a web site.

Sorry for any confusion, and thanks for commenting!

TD

Gus,
I’m sorry, my friend, but FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, your faith IS required for you to believe what you believe. That’s my whole point.

You wrote, quoting me:

a scientific theory “offers valid predictions that can be tested” and is “thrown out altogether or modified to fit the additional data” when observational results come to light that do not fit the theory. No “faith” is required: Either the theory fits the facts, or it does not. Either the predictions made by the theory test out true, or they do not.

Do you not see this? If a theory doesn’t test out true, it’s thrown out, but IT CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY PROVEN TRUE!

So it’s ditched, thrown out like so much garbage, INDICATING THAT THE SCIENCE WASN’T THERE, so people had FAITH in something that was ultimately disproven.

On the other hand, what about the accepted theories? THEY CAN NEVER BE PROVEN VALID. So bottom line is you’ve got this nice “model” of how you think things work, BUT YOU CAN’T PROVE YOURS ANY MORE THAN I CAN WHISTLE UP GOD TO PROVE THAT HE EXISTS! The fact that it’s SCIENCE, and you’ve got all these hoops you jump through just to get to theory stage — SO WHAT?

BOTTOM LINE, ONE MORE TIME — You can’t PROVE your theory. Period. Just like you say that I can’t PROVE my theory. NO DIFFERENCE.

“Faith” requires unwavering belief in a revealed truth. Science requires the willingness to abandon or revise a favored theory whenever the observed data cannot be explained.

You wouldn’t have unwavering belief in a revealed TRUTH?

And you’re still believing in something you can’t prove.

TD

I’m sorry, my friend, but FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, your faith IS required for you to believe what you believe. That’s my whole point.

And your point of view is incorrect. An attempt to tell me what I believe is the mark of desperation — as are all those capital letters. Knowing where to find the Caps Lock key doesn’t make you right.

If a theory doesn’t test out true, it’s thrown out, but IT CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY PROVEN TRUE!

Nor does science claim that any theory can be proven to be completely true. Scientific theories are not about finding “complete truth”. I suggest you disabuse yourself of that notion right now. Scientific theories are designed to do one thing: explained observed phenomena as well as possible, using the data at hand. Nothing more, nothing less.

So it’s ditched, thrown out like so much garbage, INDICATING THAT THE SCIENCE WASN’T THERE

False. When new information comes to light, the theory may be discarded, but it may also be modified. Many theories are built as modifications of older ones. Your caricature of the process exposes your lack of understanding of the nature of the scientific method.

so people had FAITH in something that was ultimately disproven.

False. Scientists use theories until better ones are formulated. That’s pragmatism, not faith. This is why, for instance, medicine has learned to treat or cure many diseases. That progress came about because scientists eschew faith, and depend instead upon theories that explain what is observed.

On the other hand, what about the accepted theories? THEY CAN NEVER BE PROVEN VALID.

They can be proven to explain observed phenomena better than theories that were discarded. Science is a process, not a product. You seem quite unwilling to comprehend that difference.

So bottom line is you’ve got this nice “model” of how you think things work, BUT YOU CAN’T PROVE YOURS ANY MORE THAN I CAN WHISTLE UP GOD TO PROVE THAT HE EXISTS! The fact that it’s SCIENCE, and you’ve got all these hoops you jump through just to get to theory stage — SO WHAT?

This is “so what”: Science self-corrects. Religion does not.

BOTTOM LINE, ONE MORE TIME — You can’t PROVE your theory. Period.

I can show that a given theory does a good job of explaining the observed phenomena. That is something no creationist can claim.

Why do you insist on a “proof”, when you admit that you yourself cannot produce one?

Just like you say that I can’t PROVE my theory. NO DIFFERENCE.

Wrong again. The theory of evolution can be shown to explain observed phenomena far better than the “theory” of creationism. Plenty of difference there.

You wouldn’t have unwavering belief in a revealed TRUTH?

Nope. For a scientist, there is no “revealed truth”. Any explanation requires testing against reality. Creationism fails when tested against reality. Period.

And you’re still believing in something you can’t prove.

You’re still telling me what I believe — an argument based entirely upon ignorance.

Intelligent Design creationism, like other forms of creationism, begins with certainty, while science begins with doubt. That alone renders it unworthy of inclusion in science classes.

There is no reality-based debate here. TD freely admits that he’s coming at this from the standpoint of God existing, which of course is a belief in the supernatural and therefore by definition beyond the reach of science. So there’s no point in trying to approach him with facts. When someone rejects evidence in favor of “God did it but we can’t seem touch, feel, hear or smell God or discern its morals or motives,” he’s lost as far as science is concerned.

Furthermore, ID creationism not only isn’t science, it’s an affront to Christianity as well because it removes the notion of humankind’s sin being responsible for worldly atrocities (an objectively dumb concept, but central to Christian apologetics) and posits that an “intelligent” designer would do things like create dinosaurs only to see wiped them out, create humans only to see them susceptible to viruses, natural disasters and poisons, etc.

By the way, “Cao” is best ignored, guys. All she does is unleash a flurry of cut-and-pasted drivel from creationist sites. Her aim is to distract from the issues at hand and to force you to waste time refuting what she digs up point by point.

Feel free to ignore BV, too, folks, as he freely proclaims on his blog that his purpose is to bother, annoy, and attack anyone who has any religion. No, he doesn’t plan to spread facts or ideas, he just, by his own admission, wants to attack and destroy anyone who believes in anything that doesn’t agree with his reality.

Gus, I’m pretty sure that what TD is saying (and correct me if I’m wrong here, TD) is that you cannot show evolution any more than he can show creationism. Both require something other than hard facts. If that’s not true, show evolution. Show some creature turning into another, different, creature. If you cannot show it, you HAVE to rely on something other than facts.

Can it, Ogre. First and foremost I do spread facts, which in turn annoy creationist and religious zealots. That’s their problem, not mine, but becomes an issue for me when these selfsame dimwits attempt to undermine society with their ignorance and mythological claptrap.

“Gus, I’m pretty sure that what TD is saying (and correct me if I’m wrong here, TD) is that you cannot show evolution any more than he can show creationism. Both require something other than hard facts. If that’s not true, show evolution. Show some creature turning into another, different, creature. If you cannot show it, you HAVE to rely on something other than facts.”

This is an incredibly stupid comparison. It’s like claiming there’s equal evidence for the Civil War and a nineteenth-century Martian invasion because neither can be directly observed today.

Those who refuse to acknowledge evolution cling to the mistaken idea that the fossil record is the key, or sole, evidence for speciaton. However, they’re wrong, especially in the era of advanced molecular biology; genome sequencing and the subsequent comparisons of the DNA of different species has confirmed everything hypothesized about evolution in the past. Evidence for evolution has only grown stronger with time, but unfortunately so has religious zealots’ unwillingness to examine it.

How do you explain bacteria evolving into resistant strains of bacteria? This has in fact been directly observed. If that’s not good enough, it’s also been observed in various plants and insects. Some of these are known to have involved random DNA mutations. (I’d give links but you guys simply don’t follow them.)

However, to state that direct observation of evolution is necessary to establish its truth is a laughably exaggerated standard — especially coming from people who claim there is “evidence” for special creation. You guys all but demand a literal highlight film or an aquatic species moving to land, yet when asked to provide the slightest support for ID you cry foul. Utter, inexcusable inanity.

Gus, I’m pretty sure that what TD is saying (and correct me if I’m wrong here, TD) is that you cannot show evolution any more than he can
show creationism. Both require something other than hard facts. If
that’s not true, show evolution. Show some creature turning into
another, different, creature.

That would be creationist claim CB910, “No new species have been observed”. Speciation has been observed in modern times, more than once.

That’s what scientists call a “hard fact”, Ogre.

Whoops. A slight mistake on the link in that last comment: Creationist claim CB910: “No new species have been observed”.

Ah, the talkorigins site. Sure, if you accept everything there at face value, Gus. Seriously.

They list the new mosquito “found” in London subways. This has since been debunked as a species that may have not been observed before, but there was no evidence that it evolved from the other species — the other species were still there.

They list other examples of the same thing — new species that they didn’t know about before — not actual observation of transition from one species to another, mind you, just a new species that they hadn’t seen before. That’s not showing evolution, that’s showing discovery.

I could go on, describing why each item on that link is not actual observation of evolution, but I’m guessing, since you provided a link to that site, that you accept all you see there with total faith and unerring accuracy.

Ah, the talkorigins site. Sure, if you accept everything there at face value, Gus. Seriously.

Because the material appears on talkorigins.org, it must be wrong. Is that the point you are trying to make, Ogre? If so, may I introduce you to the genetic fallacy?

Try again. This time, bring some facts.

I could go on, describing why each item on that link is not actual observation of evolution

Do so. And this time, with more than just fallacious arguments and unsupported claims. Let’s see some documentation.

Ogre acts as though talk.origins is not a compendium of peer-reviewed research, including countless contributors and all necessary citations, but some ardent zealot’s opinion-laced, cluelessly oriented, knowledge-phobic personal blog. He’s confusing it with himself, in other words.

That was the facts, Gus. Those things outlined on that page you provided I described. No evolution from one species to another was actually ever observed. They discovered new speices but never saw them change.

That was the facts, Gus.

Nope. That was unsupported assertion. Facts, Ogre. Who determined that the species in question had not previously existed? How did they arrive at this determination? What evidence did they examine in their study?

Your argument amounts to “nuh-UH, was not!”. Do better next time — if you can.

The scientists that reported the newfound mosquito are the ones who determined that the species had not existed. That was their whole point in stating that a new species had been found. I’m only describing what those scientists reported.

Have you read the paper by Byrne and Nichols? The paper describes breeding patterns between different mosquitos. Nowhere does it describe any observation of the evolution from one species to another. It uses the words, “suggests” and “may” quite a lot.

All I’m trying to point out is that actual evolution from any one species to another, new, different species, has not been scientifically observed. Your questions would be better directed at the scientists that made this report.

The scientists that reported the newfound mosquito are the ones who determined that the species had not existed.

Good. Now explain why they were wrong. Cite your facts.

All I’m trying to point out is that actual evolution from any one species to another, new, different species, has not been scientifically observed.

Nor has gravity been directly observed — only its effects. A phenomenon, a mechanism, quite often must be inferred from its effects. That’s a simple fact of scientific life.

What are you expecting? A fish growing legs and turning into a dog in full view? That’s not evolution — it’s only how the ignorant picture it.

You are, quite plainly, wrong. New species have been observed, and their evolutionary path from their ancestor species traced. That you do not like this fact, that you would desperately prefer that it go away, changes nothing.

Your questions would be better directed at the scientists that made this report.

You’re making the claims that no evolution took place. You’re the one who has to back up that claim.

You say that the work of Byrne and Nichols was “debunked”. When? By whom? Citation, please? Facts, please?

I’m not saying they were wrong in discovering a new species — I’m agreeing they found a new species. Those scientists just never observed the change from a different species.

The long discussion between you and TD comes down to one idea — neither creationism nor evolution can be directly observed. You almost admit it when you mention that things might have to be inferred from it’s effects. That’s faith!

I’m not saying they were wrong in discovering a new species — I’m agreeing they found a new species. Those scientists just never observed the change from a different species.

You’ve claimed that the work of Byrne and Nichols had been “debunked”. You seem oddly unwilling to discuss your claim further. Why is that?

Show us this “debunking”. Name the debunkers. Produce the facts that leed to this marvelous “debunking”.

The long discussion between you and TD comes down to one idea — neither creationism nor evolution can be directly observed. You almost admit it when you mention that things might have to be inferred from it’s effects. That’s faith!

Wrong again. That’s not the point of the discussion. The point is very simple: Evolution is a scientific theory, scientifically testable. Creationism is religion masquerading as science. That’s why it has no place being taught as a science in school.

We make inferences all the time without “faith” being involved. You’re in a room with the curtains drawn, when you hear a screech and the sound of large metal objects crumpling just outside. Is it “faith” to infer that an automobile accident just transpired?

What’s really humorous is how schizophrenic the creationists are on this matter of “faith”. They use it as a bludgeon: “You scientists take evolution on faith. How ludicrous!” Yet a moment later, they are telling us that we must believe that God created all life, just look at its wonder and diversity and have faith, brother! Make up your minds: Either “faith” is a valid reason to hold a viewpoint on the origin of species, or it is not.

Now, I do think creationism and “intelligent design” have a place in our science classrooms… as examples of what science is not, and as excellent fodder for honing the critical thinking skills of students.

I just debunked it myself. Did you miss it?

I’m not saying their work is flawed at all! I’m saying the talk origins site is misinterpreting their work. This would be similar to me saying that since Columbus discovered America, E=MC^2. The scientists discovered a mosquito. Great. Others have now claimed that means evolution exists.

And you’re now quibbing about words. Fine, you want to use the word, “infer?” That’s okay with me. You can call it inferrence, but by defintion, that’s not factual.

And yet again, another person who supports evolution applies religion to me without me ever mentioning it. I never claimed to support creationism. ALL I have said here is to try and explain what TD is claiming and where you’re disagreeing with him. I never claimed to support or believe intelligent design or creationism. I simply committed heresy to naturalists and questioned the perfect, absolute truth that is today’s evolutionist.

I guess I’m back where I started. Gus, based on what you have observed, you infer that the theory of evolution is correct. TD, based on what he has observed, infers that creationism is correct. Why is that a problem, Gus?

I just debunked it myself.

What… by simply saying it was debunked? It is to laugh…

Facts, Ogre. Your unsupported claims are worthless. Produce some facts.

I’m saying the talk origins site is misinterpreting their work.

Show us the facts that support that claim. Or are you expecting us to take this on… faith?

And you’re now quibbing about words. Fine, you want to use the word, “infer?” That’s okay with me. You can call it inferrence, but by defintion, that’s not factual.

Nor did I claim it was. My point was this: Inference is not a synonym for “faith”, as you claimed.

Words mean things. Learn the meanings.

And yet again, another person who supports evolution applies religion to me without me ever mentioning it. I never claimed to support creationism. ALL I have said here is to try and explain what TD is claiming and where you’re disagreeing with him. I never claimed to support or believe intelligent design or creationism. I simply committed heresy to naturalists and questioned the perfect, absolute truth that is today’s evolutionist.

Pfeh. Enjoy your fantasies about how scientists think, Ogre. There are no heresies in science. That’s a religious concept.

You haven’t “questioned” anything. You’ve made big, bold claims that you now want to backpedal from.

Again: Who “debunked” Byrne and Nichols? What observational facts led to that “debunking”? All we’ve seen from you so far is the semantic equivalent of “nanny nanny boo boo, you’ve been debunked”…

I guess I’m back where I started. Gus, based on what you have observed, you infer that the theory of evolution is correct.

Still wrong. No inference needed. What we can say is that the theory of evolution explains the diversity of species and their interrelationships much better than does the Biblical story of creation. Period.

Not correct. Not true. Just better at explaining what we see in the world around us.

TD, based on what he has observed, infers that creationism is correct. Why is that a problem, Gus?

Because TD’s views are not based on “observation” at all, and he made no inference. His views are based on religious dogma. And no religious dogma is fit to be taught as science.

Gribbit said:

“Next, Anyone with a username Anarchy should be seen as someone who is in the mold of the looters and murderers in New Orleans and unworthy of any attention. Reason, this is the typical apathetic moroic attitude which has led to the degrading of the values systems in this nation.”

Oh, I see the truth now. I am completely and totally to blame for the degration of society.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Wow gibbit, seriousely before you critic my beliefs ACTUALLY LEARN SOMTHING ABOUT THEM!

If im being rude and annoying then I most sincerely apologize but it bugs me when anarchist’s are blanketly classified as looters, murderers, rapists, and just about everything else.

Anarchism is about equality and freedom from oppression. Undoubtably you have been influenced by the pop cultures view as ‘Anarchy is chaos lets kill everybody’ along with the routine anti-anarchist government propaganda. However if you wish to seriousely debate my views You first need to shed these misconceptions and acually learn somthing.

Oh, and how do your political beliefs have anything to do with your argument? If I was a facist or a white supremacist would I be denied the right to debate?

TD said:

“Anarchy
“Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.”

And it works both ways, doesn’t it?”

Of course it does, but I was refering to your argument concerning how beutifull the world is. It is APPEALLING to you to look at the world and belive in a creator. (Right? maybe not? Oh, well)

This is the point that the ‘beutifull’ argument was trying to prove. This argument is guilty of the fallacy of ‘Wishfull thinking”.
So your ‘beatifull’ arguement doesn’t work.
My knight takes your rook. A victory for moi, however the game is far from over.

Now you accuse me also of committing the fallacy of wishfull thinking. However, because you didn’t really specify WHAT argument of mine was Fallaciouse I cant really respond.

Just quote one of my arguments and accuse it of being fallaciouse, and name the fallacy. This makes everything easier for both of us.

Woops, I guess that was a tad unnessasary, Oh well.

This is most likely a completely idiotic question but how do you quote people here without the copy/paste function? Anyone?

Anarchy:

Enclose the quotation in <blockquote></blockquote> tags.

TD, you said that,

“That said, so what? How do you explain that we have “developed” into creatures — the ONLY creatures, by the way — who can appreciate beauty, give and receive various emotions, etc.? How did emotions arise and develop? How did logical, thinking beings, including animals, simply develop without having been created with the ability? You have yet to offer ANY argument that supports this “evolution”, which any statistician will tell you is impossible, anyway.”

I would have to disagree with you on the idea that humans are the only species that has emotions. Simply from observing animals I’ve been able to detect emotions (or simply reactions that appear similar to emotions) in animals. Take, for instance, a cat. It hisses and communicates the idea that it is pretty pissed off. As for logic? Chimps have been taught basic math and other animals have reached similar achievements. Nothing close to a human ability but the basic capabilities are their.

As for the chances for evolution happening, what do you think are the chances that thier just happens to be an omnipotent ‘GOD ‘ that created the universe and everything? Pretty slim, I’d say. (Of course you would disagree because apparently god is in your heart. However as I said before these arguments don’t really apply when it comes to science.)

But aside from that, HOW did god create everything? This is what bugs me the most about the creationalist Idea. Im not satastfied with just ‘god did it’. So do me a favor and tell me HOW god created us and THEN we’ll discuss the odds of THAT.

You also said:
“Let me summarize it this way, once and for all — what is so different from your “faith” in science than my “faith” in a Creator? Forget science, forget religion. What’s the difference in YOUR faith and in MY faith? I’m not talking about the end result, I’m talking about the FACT of it. You believe something you cannot prove, and you say that I do the same. How is that different? That is ALL the argument I’m making, that is the bottom line of my original post. I don’t see how either of us can get past that point.”

Whats the faith in science? Its the same faith of mathamatics, Its the faith of 2+2=4.
If you don’t accept the basic building blocks of science, (that is to say that you completely reject science) I really cant argue you further. (I have been operating this entire time that, since you are argueing a scientific theory that you accept science. Evidently I am mistaken.)

Science is the study of the natural world, it is a systemized knowledge derived through experimentation, observation, and study. IF you don’t accept these premises of experimentation, observation and study then we do not accept science.

I have already shown how it is impossible to observe god and experiment with god and study god through a scientific lens. Therefore, god CANNOT be a part of science and niether can any theory that utilizes god.

Sure god can be added into the minds of the religiose to (peacefully) coextist with science. (I still belived in evolution when I was a christian) But NEVER can it be allowed infiltrate the core of science for its own sake as well.

But this shouldn’t even be an issue! We are discussing ID a SCIENTIFIC theory! It should be taken for granted that we accept the basics of science! If science class no longer accepts science then what is it?

Of course, this is truely what I desire. Return to your churches and leave science for the scientists!

TD, you said (a long time ago!):

“Now let me throw a curve ball — what if there is a God, and He’s responsible for the Big Bang?”

Ive got absolutely no problem with this. This is exactly what I am trying to say: That science and religion can coexist peacably.

All you have to do is take science and tak on the end of it some words like, “Because god said so.”

As an example: “Humans came to be through the proccess of evolution. BECAUSE GOD SAID SO”

see? it works perfectly. Now religion can leave science in peace with the knowledge that whatever science does they can simply add the words, “Because god said so.” on to the end. So science is free to expand unmolested to discover the mysteries of the universe, and religion is free to live without fear that it will be crushed beneath science. (remembeer, science will never be able to prove OR disprove Gods existance, so everything is perfect for the church)

See? So we can chuck this ID stuff and everyone has a happy ending.

Anarchy:

Enclose the quotation in

tags.

Anarchy:

Enclose the quotation in tags.

Thanks Gus!

Even creation scientists don’t talk like that, lol..”because God says so”…this is too utterly hilarious.

Big difficulties arise with the evolutionary idea of life’s beginnings. Charles Darwin and his contemporaries thought cells were rather simple and that it would be feasible for chemicals in a “primordial soup” to come together and form one. But through advances in biology, we now know that even a “simple” cell contains enough information to fill a hundred million pages of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

Cells consist essentially of proteins; one cell has thousands of proteins, and proteins are in turn made of smaller building blocks called amino acids. Normally, chains of hundreds of amino acids compose a protein, and these amino acids must be in precise functional sequence.

According to the evolutionary scenario, then, how did the first cell happen? Supposedly, amino acids formed in the primordial soup. Almost every high school biology text recounts Dr. Stanley Miller’s famous experiment. In 1953, Miller, then a University of Chicago graduate studnet, assembled an apparatus in which he combined water with hydrogen, methane, and ammonia (proposed gases of the early earth). He subjected the mixture to electric sparks. After a week, he discovered that some amino acids had formed in a trap in the system. Even though an ancient ocean would have lacked such an apparatus, evolutionists jumped at this, and proposed the theory that in the primitive Earth, lightening (corresponding to Miller’s electricity) could havfe struck a similar array of chemicals and produce amino acids. Since millions of years were involved, eventually they came, by chance, into the correct sequences. The first proteins were formed, and hence, the first cell.

But Sir Francis Crick, who shared Nobel Prize for co-discovering DNA’s structure, has pointed out how impossible that would be. He calculated that the probability of getting just one protein bychance would be one in ten to the power of 260–that’s a one with 260 zeroes after it. To put this into perspective, mathematicians usually consider antying with odds worse than one in 10 to the power of 50 to be, for practical purposes, impossible. Thus, chance couldn’t produce even one protein–let alone the thousands most cells require.

And there are some more pesky facts to this. Cells need more than proteins–they require the genetic code. A bacterium’s genetic code is far more complex than the code fo Windows 98. Nobody thinks the program for Windows 98 could have arisen by chance (unless their hard drive crashed recently).

But wait! Cells need more than genetic code! Like any language, it must be translated to be understood. Cells have devices which actually translate the code! To believe in evolution, we must believe that, by pure chance, the genetic code was created, and also by pure chance, translation devices arose which took this meaningless code and transformed it into something with meaning.

Evolutionists can’t argue that “natural selection would have improved the odds”. Natural selection operates in living things–here we are just discussing dead chemicals that preceded life’s beginning.

How could anything as complex as a cell arise by chance? A famous evolutionary argument, dates back to 1860, the year after the publication of the Origin of Species. At Oxford, Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas Huxley, engaged in a creation-evolution debate with theologian Samuel Wilberforce. There is no transcript, but reportedly, Huxley, in making his case for chance origins, said that six monkeys, poking randomly at typewriters, and given enough millions of years, could write all the books in the British Museum. More than 100 years later, people heard a variation on that theme;

“If a room full of monkeys were randomly clack at typewriters long enough, they would eventually recreate the complete works of Shakespeare. And if monkeys could recreate the complete works of Shakespeare by chance, then obviously a cell’s information content could also arise by chance, if only given enough time.”

Anyone who believes these projections hasn’t figured out the math. What are the odds of a monkey typing one predetermined nine-letter word, such as “evolution”? Let’s assume a typewriter has only letters and no other symbols. Obviously, the first letter “e” would be a piece of cake. But to get “evolution”, since the alphabet has 26 letters, one must multiply 26 by itself eight times. We find the monkey would need, on average, more than five trillion attempts just to write “evolution” once correctly. Typing ten letters per minute, this would take over a million years. To get two consecutive pretermined nine-letter words, such as “evolution commenced”, would take more than billion billion years, taking us much further back than the Big Bang, which supposedly occurred some 15 billion years ago. In other words, if a monkey started typing at the time of the Big Bang, and continued until now, he couldn’t even produce two consecutive preselected 9-letter words–let alone “the works of Shakespeare”.

If it is objected that the example had a roomful of monkeys, Dr. Duane Gish puts the monkey matter in perspective:

If one billion planets the size of the earth were covered eyeball to eyeball and elbow to elbow with monkeys, and each monkey was seated at a typewriter (requiring about 10 sequare feet for each monkey, of the approximately 10 to the 16 power square feet available on each of the 10 to the 9th power planets) and each monkey typed a string of 100 letters every second for five billion years, the chances are overwhelming that not one of these monkeys would have tyuped the sentence correctly! Only 10 to the 41 power tries could be made by all these monkeys in that five billion years…There would not be the slightest chance that a single one of the 10 to the 24 power monkeys (a trillion trillion monkeys) would have typed a preselected sentence of 100 letters (such as “The subject of this Impact article is the naturalistic design of life ont he earth under assumed primordial conditions”) without a spelling error, even once.

Even if the correct chemicals did come together by chance, would they create a living cell? Throwing sugar, flour, oil and eggs on the floor doesn’t make you a cake. Tossing together steel, rubber, glass and plastic doesn’t make you a car. These end products require skillful engineering. How much more so, then, a living organism? Suppose we put a frog in a blender and turn it into puree? All the ingredients for life would be there–but nothing living arises fromit. Even scientists in the lab can’t produce a living creature from chemicals.

How then, can blind chance?

Ok then let’s say that somehow, by chance, a cell really formed in a primeval ocean, complete with all the necessary proteins, amino acids, genetic code, translation devices, a cell membrane, etc.. Presumably, this first little cell would have been rather fragile and short-lived. But wait! It must have been quite a first cell-because within the span of its short lifetime, it must have evolved the complete process of cellular reproduction! Otherwise, there would never have been another cell.

And where did sexual reproduction come from? Male and female reproductive systems are quite different. Why would nature evolve a male reproductive system? Until it was fully functional, it would serve no purpose–and would still serve no purpose unless there was, conveniently available–a female reproductive system–which must have also arisen “by chance”.

Ok, suppose there really were some basic organic compounds formed form the “primordial soup”. If free oxygen was in the atmosphere, it would oxidize many of those compounds. In other words, destroy them. To resolve this dilemma, evolutionists have long hypothesized that the earth’s ancient atmosphere had no free oxygen. For this reason, Stanley Miller didn’t include oxygen in his experiment.

But geologists have now examined what they believe to be the Earth’s oldest rocks and –while finding no evidence for amino acid-filled “primordial soup”–they have concluded that the early Earth was rich in oxygen. So let’s say the evolutionists are right–the early Earth had no free oxygen. Without oxygen, there would be no ozone, and without the ozone layer, we would receive a lethal dose of the sun’s radiation–in just .3 seconds. How could the fragile beginnings of life have survived in this environment?

These are just a few of the problems that “chemical evolution” as a hypothesis is now facing with science having advanced past the Victorian age. Even first-grade children are taught the “fact” that life began in the ancient primordial soup as a single cell–with the scientific obstacles never discussed.

Darwin’s theory should die on this information alone.

As Ogre points out, the Evolutionist is going on BLIND FAITH. There is no proof. Where ideas have not been discredited (as in Haeckel’s embryos and vestigial organs), we have seen that Evolutionists rest on assumptions rather than observations. No one has ever observed life spontaneously generate from chemicals, or one kind of animal transform into another, or mutations generate true biological advances, or complex biochemical systems evolve. That any of these things ever happened at all requires faith by the Darwinist and for that reason, some people consider evolution better characterized as a religion rather than a science. And a vastly old, outdated and victorian-age religion, that is rapidly losing its relevance, at that.

Cao, ubiquitous in evolution-related discussions involving anti-ACLU screechers and a shameless plagiarist, has done her usual trick — swipe text from a non-credible source, throw in a few token moronic words of dissent in an “effort” to personalize it, and slap it into a comment string so as to bog down the full-scale steamrolling of her hapless buddies. The least she could do is spout her own ignorance instead of purloined canards, but she’s not even that creative or honest.

Cao has lifted almost the entirety of “her” comment from “Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism” by the creationist laughingstock James Perloff, punctuating this arrant nonsense here and there with a few of her own pronouns and modifiers.

http://charleswelty.net/evolution.htm

Nice try, Cao. You might want to look beyond sources like Wingnut Daily if you’re interested in actual science, cao. Perloff’s ramblings have as much bearing on actual biology as flat-earthism has on modern geoscience. You seem to think that if you YELL LOUDLY ENOUGH THAT EVOLUTION DOESN’T DRAW ON FACTS, THIS WILL BECOME TRUE.

Go back to the shallow end before you drown.

Anarchy,

Gus gave you a great description of the blockquote tag thingy, but you do have to copy/paste. I usually copy the text I want to use then surround it with the blockquote tags. Sometimes I do the whole quote and separate it out into different sections.

As for the rest of these comments, I’ll try and catch up a little.

Gus,

And your point of view is incorrect. An attempt to tell me what I believe is the mark of desperation — as are all those capital letters. Knowing where to find the Caps Lock key doesn’t make you right.

AARRGGGHHH!!!! Skewered by the rapier-like wit that devises the insurmountable argument “your point of view is incorrect”. Shish-kabobed by the thrust and parry of denouncing my ludicrous use of the Caps Lock key (which, incidentally, I used because I don’t care for bold all that much, and for some reason the underline doesn’t take in the comments section)! I am wounded to death by your superior debating skills!

Please, kind sir, enlighten us with your educational background, job duties, accomplishments in life. Normally I don’t ask this of a visitor, but for one so arrogant as to proclaim someone wrong in their beliefs, well, I just gotta know!

Nor does science claim that any theory can be proven to be completely true. Scientific theories are not about finding “complete truth”. I suggest you disabuse yourself of that notion right now. Scientific theories are designed to do one thing: explained observed phenomena as well as possible, using the data at hand. Nothing more, nothing less.

And again, for the — what? — fifth time? I ask: what’s the difference between the faith required to believe something that cannot be proven true and my faith in God?

So it’s ditched, thrown out like so much garbage, INDICATING THAT THE SCIENCE WASN’T THERE

False. When new information comes to light, the theory may be discarded, but it may also be modified. Many theories are built as modifications of older ones. Your caricature of the process exposes your lack of understanding of the nature of the scientific method.

Uh, Gus? Did you read what I wrote right after that? My very next comment would have explained that. You’re trying so hard to make sure I dot my Is and cross my Ts that you’re missing the point.

so people had FAITH in something that was ultimately disproven.

False. Scientists use theories until better ones are formulated. That’s pragmatism, not faith. This is why, for instance, medicine has learned to treat or cure many diseases. That progress came about because scientists eschew faith, and depend instead upon theories that explain what is observed.

So you just keep working at it, knowing it can never be proven? Heck, at least us (we?) religious folks have had the same story for a couple thousand years now. We got it right in the first place.

On the other hand, what about the accepted theories? THEY CAN NEVER BE PROVEN VALID.

They can be proven to explain observed phenomena better than theories that were discarded. Science is a process, not a product. You seem quite unwilling to comprehend that difference.

Your assumptions were quite amusing, at first, now they’re getting kind of irritating. I understand the scientific process completely. I agree with science — most of it. All in the world I’m saying is that scientific theories are just as faith-based as religion. I’m not saying one should replace the other in either direction.

This is “so what”: Science self-corrects. Religion does not.

What’d you do, see my “so what” and raise me another? Irrelevant.

In looking back over most everyone’s arguments, but especially Gus’s and Beaming Visionary’s, I see too many false assumptions to deal with. It’s depressing that what I would think would be intelligent human beings can twist an argument, assumption, or just downright lie and think they’re winning points.

Honestly, I just realized that I’m too smart to break my fingers on a keyboard trying to convince someone of an idea or concept that they have rejected before it is even offered.

Further, I’m incredibly tired from a project I’ve been working on at work for the last few weeks, and I’m frankly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of debate in process here.

Most of those who disagree with me simply do not understand what I’m trying to say, and are trying to repeat their same old arguments. You’ve got a mindset against the very thought that my beliefs might be true, and like my daddy said, “Never argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

(Anarchy, I may reply to you privately via e-mail over the weekend if you don’t mind).

Everyone feel free to continue the debate as you will, but I’ll leave with a final thought –

If atheism is true, no one will ever know, and no one can possibly care after their death.

If Christianity is true, we’re all going to know it, atheists to their eternal discomfort.

Personally, I’m glad I’ve got a better reason than that to believe.

TD

“All in the world I’m saying is that scientific theories are just as faith-based as religion.”

I understand and appreciate that you’re trying to be reasonable, but this assertion, virtually identical to Ogre’s, is wrong — not just because I’m saying it is, but by definition.

You qualified the term “theory” with the adjective “scientific,” so I assume we can toss out the colloquial definition — or perception — of what a “theory” is (which among creationists seems to be “wild guess”). A scientific theory is, to use Wikipedia’s definition, “a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a certain natural or social phenomenon, thus either originating from observable facts or supported by them. In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations made that is predictive, testable, and has never been falsified.”

Religion, by its very nature, fails with flying colors. It is neither rooted in nor supported by observation, predicts nothing (and in fact is rife with unfulfilled prophecies), is not testable, and cannot be falsified (as demonstrated by creationists’ insistence that God cannot be proven nonexistent, is beyond mere human understanding, etc.). In fact, were there evidence for the attributed ascribed to God, the term “faith” would be wholly expendable. Instead, using their charming brand of inverted logic, religious adherents often tout the faith-based (and hence evidence-free) nature of belief in the unobservable and unknowable as a point in favor of blind credulity.

To liken any of this in epistemological terms to the reams of scientific literature supporting the theory of evolution — eminently falsifiable in any number of ways, by the way, yet never falsified — is sheer fancy. However, because religious people of the fundamentalist Christian varieties are literally committed to believing in Adam (without whom there would be no original sin, hence no Christ as he’s popularly perceived, hence no “salvation,” hence no Christianity), it is understandable that they will forever reject the seemingly obvious at all costs, since to accept evolution is to deny Adam and hence the very faith they claim to live by.

“If Christianity is true, we’re all going to know it, atheists to their eternal discomfort.”

And if any one of the world’s countless other religions are true, Christians are even more screwed than are atheists. Christians, bear in mind are also atheists — the only difference between them and the bona fide godless is that the latter simply believe in one fewer god than do Jesus embracers.

Nice one, TD: “Never argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” I’m going to have to remember that one!

And Gus, thank you. You finally agreed with my entire point when you said evolution is “Just better at explaining what we see in the world around us.”

That’s the only point I’m making — your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s. Note I never said that your opinion was wrong — I’m just pointing out that you have an opinion — and a lot of people have a different opinion.

Thanks, TD, for giving us all this space to play!

“You finally agreed with my entire point when you said evolution is ‘Just better at explaining what we see in the world around us.’”

One must twist Gus’ words beyond recognition in order to create the illusion that he agrees with you, but even if this were true, I have a question. If “your entire point” is that evolution is better at explaining what we see in the world around us, then why do you claim it’s riddled with errors, lacks sufficient evidence, is no better supported by evidence than special creation, and is strictly a by-product of atheistic desires? I’d love to see you explain that one, because it’s clear that your “entire point” is that you as a Jesusite believe that evolution is no better an explanation than creation (and in fact find it wanting).

That lots of people have their own “opinions” regarding bodies of scientific knowledge is meaningless from the standpoint of honest inquiry, but you creation fans haven’t understood or accepted this despite dozens of exposures, so you never will. That’s okay, because science exists outside of human doings and failings. Those determined wingnuts who wish to push us toward delusional world views may have their voice for a while, but in 100 years the truth will still be there, waiting for America to catch up. Despite the number of dolts in the U.S.A., this much is reassuring — i.e., that religious fools can attack science, but cannot affect it.

You see the problem is that each side continuously tries to prove it’s own stance which comes down to a matter of faith, so anything being resolved bt these means is next to impossible unless an atheist has something happen that realizes God to them (which happens regularly) or a Christian has something that realizes no God (which rarely happens).

So I think that the better tactic is to show evidence against either side.

For me there is no way to disprove God…none.

On the other hand, evolution has major holes in it. Time being one. Evolutionists fail to realize that their model of creation could not possibly have happened in the amount of time that they said that it happened in. And these guys are scientist, you think that they would have crunched the numbers and at least began to change the story to fit the timeline. So ladies and gentleman, via Dr. Morris and icr.org I give you the “Mathematical Impossibility of Evolution”.

“…For example, consider a very simple putative organism composed of only 200 integrated and functioning parts, and the problem of deriving that organism by this type of process. The system presumably must have started with only one part and then gradually built itself up over many generations into its 200-part organization. The developing organism, at each successive stage, must itself be integrated and functioning in its environment in order to survive until the next stage. Each successive stage, of course, becomes statistically less likely than the preceding one, since it is far easier for a complex system to break down than to build itself up. A four-component integrated system can more easily “mutate” (that is, somehow suddenly change) into a three-component system (or even a four-component non-functioning system) than into a five-component integrated system. If, at any step in the chain, the system mutates “downward,” then it is either destroyed altogether or else moves backward, in an evolutionary sense.

Therefore, the successful production of a 200-component functioning organism requires, at least, 200 successive, successful such “mutations,” each of which is highly unlikely. Even evolutionists recognize that true mutations are very rare, and beneficial mutations are extremely rare—not more than one out of a thousand mutations are beneficial, at the very most.

But let us give the evolutionist the benefit of every consideration. Assume that, at each mutational step, there is equally as much chance for it to be good as bad. Thus, the probability for the success of each mutation is assumed to be one out of two, or one-half. Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then (½)200, or one chance out of 1060. The number 1060, if written out, would be “one” followed by sixty “zeros.” In other words, the chance that a 200-component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion! Lest anyone think that a 200-part system is unreasonably complex, it should be noted that even a one-celled plant or animal may have millions of molecular “parts.”

The evolutionist might react by saying that even though any one such mutating organism might not be successful, surely some around the world would be, especially in the 10 billion years (or 1018 seconds) of assumed earth history. Therefore, let us imagine that every one of the earth’s 1014 square feet of surface harbors a billion (i.e., 109) mutating systems and that each mutation requires one-half second (actually it would take far more time than this). Each system can thus go through its 200 mutations in 100 seconds and then, if it is unsuccessful, start over for a new try. In 1018 seconds, there can, therefore, be 1018/102, or 1016, trials by each mutating system. Multiplying all these numbers together, there would be a total possible number of attempts to develop a 200-component system equal to 1014 (109) (1016), or 1039 attempts. Since the probability against the success of any one of them is 1060, it is obvious that the probability that just one of these 1039 attempts might be successful is only one out of 1060/1039, or 1021.

All this means that the chance that any kind of a 200-component integrated functioning organism could be developed by mutation and natural selection just once, anywhere in the world, in all the assumed expanse of geologic time, is less than one chance out of a billion trillion. What possible conclusion, therefore, can we derive from such considerations as this except that evolution by mutation and natural selection is mathematically and logically indefensible”

Cheers!

NOTE: On my previous entry, the exponents did not paste over correctly. So where you see numbers like “1060″ is actually 10^60. Sorry for the confusion. Here is the link to read the article in it’s original text.

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=493

BV,

And if any one of the world’s countless other religions are true, Christians are even more screwed than are atheists. Christians, bear in mind are also atheists — the only difference between them and the bona fide godless is that the latter simply believe in one fewer god than do Jesus embracers.

Christians aren’t atheists, they’re monotheists — believing in One God.

Stick to defending science, man.

Hey, morg173

You see the problem is that each side continuously tries to prove it’s own stance which comes down to a matter of faith, so anything being resolved bt these means is next to impossible unless an atheist has something happen that realizes God to them (which happens regularly) or a Christian has something that realizes no God (which rarely happens).

First of all I would have to disagree with you about how often christians convert to athiesm, from my experiance I would guess that the numbers are about the equall.

Secondly, we are dealing with science here. The thoughts and feelings inside your heart about the existance of god (sadly?) have no place in science. It doesn’t matter If an athiest converts to christianity OR if a christian converts to athiesm. The facts stay the same.

Aside from that not all christians are supporters of ID (the majority of the christians that I know don’t buy ID) and not all supporters of the theory of evolution are athiests (the pastor at the church I used to attend accepted the theory of evolution and many scientists are also christians that cao showed earlier on)

“Evolutionists fail to realize that their model of creation could not possibly have happened in the amount of time that they said that it happened in.”

morg fails to realize that evolution in no way even seeks to explain origins, or to use morg’s word, “creation.” You’re thinking of what most scientists call abiogenesis.

That aside, in terms of your math, you’ve eaten of the usual flawed assumptions from the Institute for Creation Research, home to exactly zero reputable scientists. I’ll deal with only one — the idea that there is ony *one* ultimately successful outcome if one starts with a system including one “compoenent” and ends with one involving an arbitrary number such as two hundred. This kind of reasoning presumes a unique endpoint, the one putative 200-component organism resulting from 200 *specified* sequential mutations; evolution, which is blind (but not “random”) does not.

Thinkof the difference between the odds of tossing a random assortment of 4,000 letters into the air every few seconds and having twelve of them line up to spell “Christ,” and the odds of doing the same and winding up with any six-letter English word. The absolute odds are different but the principle is the same. A better example — let’s say everyone in the U.S. was involved in a coin-flipping contest. We all pair off and keep going until there’s one winner who has been right something like 27 straight times. The odds of picking this person in advance are astronomically against, but the odds of there being *a* winner are one hundred percent.

Not only that, but evolution doesn’t hinge on the success of models like these anyway. None has been put forth that poses any sort of fair challenge to the body of evidence favoring common descent with modification and natural selection acting on random genetic mutations. To state that the evidence for evolution is flawed is to profess ignorance of the subject. The fact that details remain to be discovered does not, in capable minds at least, invalidate the vast amount of knowledge that we do already have.

Another reason for why Morris’ calculations don’t wash is here.

Realize that all of these creationists begin with a conclusion, one drummed into them long before they consider delving into science, and are therefore committed to seeking or fabricating evidence to fit this conclusion (i.e., God did it). People studying evolution, despite the squawks of creationists, have no anti-God agenda. But if the trail of evidence leads inevitably in directions that don’t favor God, well, it appears a belief set is in need of abandonment or forceful reconciliaton, and it isn’t that of the objective knowledge seeker.