Verifiable evidence for creationism?

Sapiens said:

Genesis is falsified by its may errors. For example,one of which is that the creation account in .Genesis got the order of events wrong. Even the most error prone document will get the odd thing right stochastically, thus necessitating your cherry picking and inventiveness.

Click to expand...

Skwim said:

Genesis 1:Order of Events..... Genesis 2: Order of Events
1) heavens and earth created . 1) heavens and earth created
2) light shines on earth ........... 2) plant life appears
3) light divided from darkness. 3) man (male only) created
4) firmament divided............... 4) animal life created
5) land separated from water . 5) woman made from man’s side
6) plant life appears
7) sun, moon, and stars appear
8) animal life created
9) man (male and female) created
source

Click to expand...

Zosimus said:

... Are you aware, for example, that penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs? Chocolate kills dogs. Aspirin kills cats.

Click to expand...

Zosimus said:

No, I said you shouldn't take drugs at all. Learn to read. Nevertheless, how many people in this world have taken marijuana? Cocaine? Alcohol? Nicotine? Caffeine?

Click to expand...

gnostic said:

SkepticThinker was referring to testing of (proposed) prescription medicine, not illegal drugs or caffeine or alcohol.

Click to expand...

Zosimus said:

I have no idea where you live, but where I live it is legal to consume marijuana, cocaine(in its natural form), alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. All of the above are drugs. Overdose of cocaine, alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine can be fatal. Overdose of marijuana not so much. Nevertheless, none of the above drugs was extensively tested for safety and efficacy before people started using (and abusing). What happened? Well, some people have died. Smart people don't use (or abuse) and life goes on.

Click to expand...

gnostic said:

Zosimus, drug can mean illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, speed, etc, but SkepticalThinker was clearly referring to medicine. That's what ST mean when he talk of safety requirements and testing medicine (drugs).

Animals, such as mice, guinea pigs, etc, are tested first with the medicine, before human trial can begin. It is only after human trials, that medicine (drug) can be manufactured and made available for doctors to prescribe for patients.

You need to understand the context of what SkepticalThinker is saying, and not to jump to conclusion, Zosimus.

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

No, I don't confuse the complexity of life with the origin of life. However you cannot have the first without the latter. The proposal is that abiogenisis led to very complex life forms. There is no scientific evidence that explains abiogenesis. Therefore those who believe in it by faith, cannot expect others to share their faith. There is little true evidence of macro evolution, especially if there is no evidence as to how it started. Thus there is no evidence that explains how the complex life forms came into being. How do you void the proven, over and over again, second law of thermodynamics as relates to standard mechanisms and simple beginnings ? What mechanisms, what beginnings ? as to God "creating himself", I have addressed that issue in detail in another post to "Skeptic Thinker". Please consider that response as my response to your question.

Click to expand...

Skwim said:

Genesis 1:Order of Events..... Genesis 2: Order of Events
1) heavens and earth created . 1) heavens and earth created
2) light shines on earth ........... 2) plant life appears
3) light divided from darkness. 3) man (male only) created
4) firmament divided............... 4) animal life created
5) land separated from water . 5) woman made from man’s side
6) plant life appears
7) sun, moon, and stars appear
8) animal life created
9) man (male and female) created
source

Click to expand...

Skwim said:

Genesis 1:Order of Events..... Genesis 2: Order of Events
1) heavens and earth created . 1) heavens and earth created
2) light shines on earth ........... 2) plant life appears
3) light divided from darkness. 3) man (male only) created
4) firmament divided............... 4) animal life created
5) land separated from water . 5) woman made from man’s side
6) plant life appears
7) sun, moon, and stars appear
8) animal life created
9) man (male and female) created
source

Click to expand...

Sapiens said:

It'll take a whole passel of apologizers to just begin to detangle Gen 1 and Gen 2.

I'm waiting to see what shmogie has to offer. I hope he does better than the crap that Hugh Ross (he of the six “age-days” e.g., billions of years of creation) dishes up: "... an examination of the point of view in each passage clarifies why. Genesis 1 focuses on the physical events of creation; Genesis 2, on the spiritual events. More specifically, Genesis 1 describes those miracles God performed to prepare the earth for mankind. Genesis 2 presents God’s assignment of authority and responsibility.

Careful attention to verb tenses and to the purpose of each account eliminates any supposed contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2. Plants, rain, man, animals, and woman are subjects of discussion in Genesis 2, but creation chronology is not the issue. The man (Adam) simply interacts first with the plants, then with the animals, and last of all, with the woman (Eve). His role with respect to each is delineated."

If we are reduced to this sort of mush-mouthed cafeteria Christianity the conversation is not worth a bucket of warm spit.

Click to expand...

viole said:

The second law of thermodynamics? Man, I thought threbuttal of evolution.d

Honestly: do you think that the scientific community is so silly to have missed a violation of this law on such a large scale while still keeping it as a law? I mean, a few cells becoming an adult person should not happen either, according to your logic.

Of course not, evolution does not violate the second principle at all. Some mesurements of the entropic balance on earth would allow the whole billion years of evolution to unfold in a few decades, if not less, without violating the principle.

You cando the math yourself. It is not all that difficult.

Ciao

- viole

P.S. Do you at least accept that the earth is a few billions old?

Click to expand...

viole said:

The second law of thermodynamics? Man, I thought that even Answer in Genesis discourages it from using it as a rebuttal of evolution.

Honestly: do you think that the scientific community is so silly to have missed a violation of this law on such a large scale while still keeping it as a law? I mean, a few cells becoming an adult person should not happen either, according to your logic.

Of course not, evolution does not violate the second principle at all. Some mesurements of the entropic balance on earth would allow the whole billion years of evolution to unfold in a few decades, if not less, without violating the principle.

You cando the math yourself. It is not all that difficult.

Ciao

- viole

P.S. Do you at least accept that the earth is a few billions old?

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

Bwaaaa, ha, ha, you crack me up. You think by using your juvenile hyperbole you can smokescreen and divert the issue at hand. lets ignore your shuk'n and jiv'n and look at whether Genesis chronicles the BB. Wow, look at that the heavens and earth created. Instantly. Well, Doesn't the BB propose that all energy, which is mass, burst into reality, instantly ? Look at that, light didn't exist immediately in Genesis , and the BB proposes that there was no light initially. The light was divided from the darkness, dude, what does that mean ? Well,


The second law says established systems will always break down over time. Your reference re the development of a child is not relevant. A human is the established system, from conception till death. A human certainly descends into chaos from conception till death, cells cease to function properly, bones become brittle and break, organs are impaired, the person dies. Never does a person continue getting stronger, , developing more effective kidneys, liver, lungs, heart continuously as she ages. Nope, she dies. A perfect example of the second law of thermodynamics. Your proposal that this whatever living thing, the result, of chemical reaction from non living things, just gets better and better over time, morphing into a massive variety of complicated organisms, can't happen according to that second law. Lets call that first life form a cell, it is an established system, it has to be to survive, how can it become an even more complicated system, when the second law says it can do only one thing, descend into chaos and die ? Yes I concede happily that the universe is 15 billion years old, depending upon your perspective. I will be discussing this in depth elsewhere in this thread, please follow it there and of course feel free to chime in. I am a one finger typist, and don't want to go through the agony of typing duplicate explanations and responses

Click to expand...

Zosimus said:

I have already refuted SkepticalThinker's claims.

First of all, scientific animal testing probably excludes many valuable drugs. For example, penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs. With current testing methods, this medication would probably never have been brought to market.

Second, 92 percent of all medication that passes animal testing is discarded when it comes to human testing. Countless numbers of animals are killed unnecessarily supposedly in the name of making a medication safe, but the procedure fails 92 percent of the time.

Additionally, many medications make it onto the market and are later recalled because of side effects and health risks that were not detected during the billion-dollar scientific inquiry into their effects. This is not to mention that many known-dangerous drugs that are left on the market. Seldane pops to mind immediately, a drug that is known to have caused multiple deaths. The FDA chose to leave it on the market until fexofenadine came on the market. Then the FDA removed the drug from circulation. Cynics might suggest backroom politics were more responsible for the FDA's decision than was science.

Finally, I cannot personally think of many illnesses that need drugs for the cure. The vast majority of illnesses are the result of bad lifestyle decisions. The big killers such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, COPD, influenza, and HIV/pneumonia are all preventable or curable without conventional medication. In many cases the drugs prescribed to aid these conditions do more harm than good. A simple look at https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2015/10/27/how-much-longer-will-you-live-if-you-take-a-statin/ shows that at least one doctor had someone do the calculations for him on statins, one of the most prescribed types of drugs out there, and determined that the gain from statins is pretty mediocre. Unfortunately, he couldn't get it published. He should have gone to PLOS. They publish everything that is methodologically sound.

Before you claim that all this "science" is helpful, take a look at http://www.economist.com/news/scien...h-results-all-clinical-trials-skewing-medical

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

Bwaaaa, ha, ha, you crack me up. You think by using your juvenile hyperbole you can smokescreen and divert the issue at hand. lets ignore your shuk'n and jiv'n and look at whether Genesis chronicles the BB. Wow, look at that the heavens and earth created. Instantly. Well, Doesn't the BB propose that all energy, which is mass, burst into reality, instantly ? Look at that, light didn't exist immediately in Genesis , and the BB proposes that there was no light initially. The light was divided from the darkness, dude, what does that mean ? Well,


The second law says established systems will always break down over time. Your reference re the development of a child is not relevant. A human is the established system, from conception till death. A human certainly descends into chaos from conception till death, cells cease to function properly, bones become brittle and break, organs are impaired, the person dies. Never does a person continue getting stronger, , developing more effective kidneys, liver, lungs, heart continuously as she ages. Nope, she dies. A perfect example of the second law of thermodynamics. Your proposal that this whatever living thing, the result, of chemical reaction from non living things, just gets better and better over time, morphing into a massive variety of complicated organisms, can't happen according to that second law. Lets call that first life form a cell, it is an established system, it has to be to survive, how can it become an even more complicated system, when the second law says it can do only one thing, descend into chaos and die ? Yes I concede happily that the universe is 15 billion years old, depending upon your perspective. I will be discussing this in depth elsewhere in this thread, please follow it there and of course feel free to chime in. I am a one finger typist, and don't want to go through the agony of typing duplicate explanations and responses

Click to expand...

Sapiens said:

It'll take a whole passel o'dem apologizers to just begin to detangle Genesis1 and Genesis2.

I'm waiting to see what shmogie has to offer. I hope he does better than the crap that Hugh Ross (he of the six “age-days” e.g., billions of years of creation) dishes up: "... an examination of the point of view in each passage clarifies why. Genesis 1 focuses on the physical events of creation; Genesis 2, on the spiritual events. More specifically, Genesis 1 describes those miracles God performed to prepare the earth for mankind. Genesis 2 presents God’s assignment of authority and responsibility.

Careful attention to verb tenses and to the purpose of each account eliminates any supposed contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2. Plants, rain, man, animals, and woman are subjects of discussion in Genesis 2, but creation chronology is not the issue. The man (Adam) simply interacts first with the plants, then with the animals, and last of all, with the woman (Eve). His role with respect to each is delineated."

If we are reduced to this sort of mush-mouthed cafeteria Christianity the conversation is kin to John Nance Garner's observation of the Vice Presidency, that to say, "it is not worth a bucket of warm spit."

If you understood why, and what, of these three observations are true, you would have three good examples of why Theodosius Dobzhansky said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" rather than hold forth with indefensible and idiosyncratic medical opinions that your lack of evolutionary acumen renders you unqualified to advance.

Click to expand...

Sapiens said:

Predictable, no addressing of the issue, ad hominem disparagement of your opposition, and errors stemming from a lack of understanding. But an excellent example of why science works and your pseudophilosophy fails, thank you for that.

Evolution is in fact defined, rather imprecisely, as: "descent with modification." The corollary observation, which you and many others (even some in the field) mistake for the definition, is a description not of what evolution is, but rather how evolution can be measured: "evolution can be measured as a change in allele frequency and trait mean between generations."

The term "Darwinism" was first applied to the work of Erasmus Darwin in the late 18th century. The term was revived with reference to Charles Darwin by Thomas Henry Huxley in the April 1860 issue of the Westminster Review. In the 19th century there was no clear definition of the term, it was used by both opponents and supporters to mean just about whatever they wanted it to, including flights of fancy by Kropotkin and others.

Darwin's opinions have held up rather well. It is safe to say that Darwinism is at the core of the modern Theory of Evolution and that in covers common descent, despite your claim that it does not. Darwin proposed his, "theory of universal common descent through an evolutionary process" in On the Origin of Species. He noted that, "there was only one progenitor for all life forms" and ended with: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." So, yes, Darwinism includes the theory of common descent.
" There was only one progenitor of all life forms" Well Charlie, you and your acolytes must PROVE your assertion. Then of course, this begs the question, where did this first progenitor come from ? Charlie, charlie, an unproven theory that is just words, the same accusation hurled at Creationists, lol, what a big joke

You are correct that the Theory of Evolution is not atheism, but you must admit that the TOE makes a god concept rather irrelevant (at least to the origin of humankind) and it is this relegation to unimportantance in the process that so enrages and energizes the creationists.

As for the theory that chimps and humans (also know as "the third chimpanzee") share a common ancestor, you need only examine the human Chromosome 2 to nail that theory down, as outlined in wiki:

Click to expand...

gnostic said:

This is more straw man from you.

You are jumping to conclusion again.

No one here (including SkepticalThinker) is saying that people shouldn't live a healthy lifestyle, with proper diet and exercises. No one here is saying that people should become addicted to drug, illegal or medicine.

SkepticalThinker was only saying that medicine required testings for precaution and safety reason. SkepticalThinker never said anything against being health conscious.

And you have misunderstood what he mean by drug, when he was talking about drug testing; he was talking about medical trial and testing. Personally, I think you have misunderstood what ST's replies.

But instead of apologising for misunderstanding, you conflated situation with you putting words in ST's mouth, things that he never said or wrote about. You didn't refute anything that SkepticalThinker wrote; you just use straw man to attack what he didn't say, and you have also move the goalpost. These are very dishonest tactics.

Do you have no etiquette and no grace, Zosimus?

If you misunderstood ST, the best thing is to do is apologise and admit that you misunderstood what he meant. Instead, you are wrote thing that SkepticalThinker didn't write in his reply, making things up.

Is it ego? Are you so puff up, that you can't admit a mistake?

Click to expand...

FranklinMichaelV.3 said:

Note that the diseases that you list here are quite specifically issues where "first world" countries are impacted. Countries with lesser resources and lower public health capabilities suffer from many diseases/parasites that result in death beyond the big killers. While we might scoff from things like TB, Malaria, Yellow Fever, Diphtheria, Sleeping Sickness, and various other diseases here, they are a very real threat in other countries.

That being said, it has been public health initiatives that have been a major resource in improving our life span, not so much the creation of medicine, though vaccinations have proven important and integral in saving the lives of children, whooping cough, chicken pox, scarlet fever, and lets not forget smallpox can be deadly to children and even the elderly. It has been more important to put a strong healthcare infrastructure in place -- most medications existing today within "first world countries" are specific to chronic illnesses and are to control symptoms, not particularly a cure as we had when the diseases we were facing were infectious and acute in nature.

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

Darwins theory holds up rather well. Only if you define "rather well" as scientifically unproven

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

FOR SAPIENS, I started this response to you in a manner I deem inappropriate, if you see it, disregard it. This is my response pay attention, I will do this in segments. I find your response to Dr. Ross interesting, You did nothing to rebut, you simply had a tantrum.

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

FOR SAPIENS - The beginning of my response to you was in a manner I deem inappropriate, disregard.it if you see it. I find your response to Dr. Ross interesting. You did not rebut him in any way shape or form. A tantrum is no rebuttal. I have read him extensively, but be at peace, the concepts I will be posting are not from him. Rather, they are from Dr. Gerald Schroeder. He holds a double doctorate from MIT in nuclear physics and earth sciences, and was a professor there for 7 years.

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

You appear to be obfuscating the original issue. The issue is, does the BB theory validate the creation account in Genesis 1. It does. I will be happy to discuss biology or botany or geology in relation to this, if you choose, but the first act of creation and the BB are what I will cover first.

So, was creation in six 24 hour days, or in billions years ? the answer is yes. I am sure you have heard of Einsteins theory of General relativity, In effect, energy and matter are the same,interchangeable, E=MC squared.. You may have even heard of time dilation, or space time dilation, which is part of relativity. Concepts proven. With dimensional objects, the further away we are from them the smaller they appear, time is just as elastic. We don't notice tiny time dilation's on earth, but if you walk across a room, you save time. Relativity says time slows down for a moving object in relation to a static object. So time telescopes in the universe, time moves according to your perspective to it. so, the entire creation took 6 days, or 15 billion years, according to your perspective. The creation account is from Gods perspective looking out, the scientific perspective is looking back 15 billion years. Some simple math for you. The standard number for the expansion of the universe is that it is a million times a million times larger now than when it was at the beginning. This is not an arbitrary number, This is a standard found in many, many books and textbooks, written by secular scientists. Obviously space and time have stretched to the factor of one followed by 12 zero's. If at the beginning God had a laser that he fired into the creation every second.Each pulse would be 186,000 miles apart, the speed of light per second. Today, if we receive those pulses of light on earth, they would not be one second apart, because of the expansion of the universe, they could be millions of years apart. So, is there a one second interval between the pulses, or is there a million years between the pulses? It depends upon your perspective. The Bible looks forward in time from that perspective, science looks back in time from our perspective. A very simple equation; Divide 15 billion ( years of creation from our perspective) by 1 million squared ( the expansion of the universe) you will get .015 of a year. Multiply that by 365 ( days of the year), and you will get approx., 6 (days) Interesting, huh ? I am tired of typing now. Consider this a first installment. Read it, critique it, find anything you can to rebut it.,

Click to expand...

Mark Perakh said:

Schroeder's explanation requires a leap of faith. It is fine as long as it is not suggested to be an explanation based on science. There is nothing scientific in the notion that God's frame of reference may be vastly different from men's frame of reference. As far as faith is considered, the above assertion is not a new one, and is simply beyond any discussion in rational, scientific terms. Schroeder, though, wants readers to believe that the described explanation is somehow based on the theory of relativity. It is not.

What the special theory of relativity (STR) has established is indeed that time flows at different rate in different "inertial frames of reference." What the STR meant by different inertial frames of reference was quite rigorously defined. The rate of time flow is different in two such frames of reference which mechanically move relative to each other with certain constant speeds. To make a period of time that is billions of years long in one frame of reference, last only six days in the other frame of reference, these two frames of reference must move relative to each other with an extremely high speed.

Of course, to apply this rigorously defined situation to the creation of the universe according to the Bible requires a considerable stretch of imagination. To satisfy the requirements of the special theory of relativity, as per Schroeder's explanation, we have to accept that, first, God is a physical body, second, that it is a body which occupies a certain localized volume in space, and third, to imagine that, during the six days of creation, the Creator was rushing at an enormous speed past the universe he was creating. What would then remain from the concept of the omnipresent non-material God? God performing a marathon - this picture might have been satisfactory for Schroeder's eight-year old son. For those over eight years of age, a better choice seems to be relegating the six-days creation story back to the realm of faith.

Note: Perakh taught physics, researched superconductivity, and wrote some 5 times more scientific papers (over 300 in all) than Schroeder (with 60, even I have about ten papers more than Schroeder). Perakh was an actual full professor, teaching physics and math, but his public recognition stems from his writing about science and religion on Talk Reason, a website he helped found, and from his regular contributions to the blog The Panda's Thumb. I leave to you to more fully examine Perakh's views: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/schroeder.cfm#faults

Click to expand...

shmogie said:

DO NOT respond in an arrogant dismissive fashion, if you do, I will cast no more pearls before swine.

Click to expand...

Sapiens said:

Actually every time I reread Darwin I am amazed at how bright and insightful he was. He had no knowledge of genetics yet Dawinism has never been shown to be wrong ... only incomplete. As we have learned more, the new knowledge has melded right in and never required a significant rejection of core content.
Rebutting metaphysical claims is a waste of time and energy, it's like wrestling with greased pig and no more significant. Ross shows the same problem that other physicists and math types do, they assume that there are actual final proofs where none exist. This reality, in my observation, makes them uncomfortable and they grasp at straws, being unwilling to take a deep breath and admit that they do not know and that we (as a species) may never actually "know."

No, your appeal to authority fails. Schroeder holds a single doctorate (as I understand it), he was at MIT for 5 years, not 7 years, and he was just staff not faculty.

You've done naught but regurgitate Schroeder's apology. I can as easily regurgitate any number of debunkings on top and add to that the icing on the cake indictment that Schroeder's presuppositional stance disqualifies him from being taken seriously. Keep in mind that Schroeder is not making a new argument, the apology that the length of the Genesis day might not be 24 modern hours goes way back and was even used by Darrow in the the Scopes trial in 1925 to make a point quite opposite to the kool-aid you're serving..

Now, I am no cosmologist and my physics training ended in one PhD level Physical Oceanography course, however, it is clear to me that cogent falsification for Schroeder's views exists:
True, you certainly are no cosmologist. What you are though is one who enters a discussion, with a totally set view, and when someone disafgrees with you.,

Wrong on both counts.

Click to expand...

viole said:

The fact that we decay and die has nothing to do with the second principle. There is enough low entropy for us to live millions of years. Again, the low entropy energy coming from the sun supplies that.

We decay and die for a very simple reason: evolution by natural selection. Once our job to duplicate has been done , there is no real reason to keep us alive beyond necessity, especially if we consider the decreasing probabliity of staying alive for a long time because of predators and other calamities. In other words: we are not worth the effort anymore.

Ciao

- viole

Click to expand...

Sapiens said:

Actually every time I reread Darwin I am amazed at how bright and insightful he was. He had no knowledge of genetics yet Dawinism has never been shown to be wrong ... only incomplete. As we have learned more, the new knowledge has melded right in and never required a significant rejection of core content.
Rebutting metaphysical claims is a waste of time and energy, it's like wrestling with greased pig and no more significant. Ross shows the same problem that other physicists and math types do, they assume that there are actual final proofs where none exist. This reality, in my observation, makes them uncomfortable and they grasp at straws, being unwilling to take a deep breath and admit that they do not know and that we (as a species) may never actually "know."

No, your appeal to authority fails. Schroeder holds a single doctorate (as I understand it), he was at MIT for 5 years, not 7 years, and he was just staff not faculty.

You've done naught but regurgitate Schroeder's apology. I can as easily regurgitate any number of debunkings on top and add to that the icing on the cake indictment that Schroeder's presuppositional stance disqualifies him from being taken seriously. Keep in mind that Schroeder is not making a new argument, the apology that the length of the Genesis day might not be 24 modern hours goes way back and was even used by Darrow in the the Scopes trial in 1925 to make a point quite opposite to the kool-aid you're serving..

Now, I am no cosmologist and my physics training ended in one PhD level Physical Oceanography course, however, it is clear to me that cogent falsification for Schroeder's views exists:


Wrong on both counts.

Click to expand...