(no subject)
There is a community on here called "Challenging God". This entry was supposed to be a response to a post there where a scientist was quoted as saying that the evidence for evolution is as strong as the evidence for the negative impact of smoking. Unfortunately you can only post there if you are a member of the community and I have no wish to be a member of such a community so I will be posting my entry here as it took a long time to write and I don't want to just delete it.
If a person says that evolution arguments are the same as smoking arguments, that person is what we commonly refer to as an idiot. You see, we can test smoking in a lab. People are smoking right now. There is someone somewhere smoking a cigarette, both as I write this and as you read it. We are able to repeat the process over and over and over again. There are no lower life forms becoming humans right now. There are no lower life forms becoming higher life forms right now. We can not do it in a lab. We can perform artificial selection in a lab. But that's not evolution. We can observe natural selection in nature, but that's not evolution either. We can take some dogs and breed them to almost any shape and size, but in the end they are still dogs.
You want evolution to be a fact then you need to breed them until they aren't dogs anymore. That is what you have to do to firmly state that evolution has happened. But no one does that. You know why? It can't happen. Evolution is not empirical science. It has not and can not be tested. It is not natural selection. There is nothing in all of science to suggest that natural selection could have led to the incredibly diverse creatures we have today.
Evolutionists are forever talking about creation and ID as though they aren't science. They get away with it because they are talking to people who don't bother to learn about creation or ID firsthand, but instead take the word of non-creationists and non-IDers. This is proven by the constantly repeated straw man arguments (i.e. trying to say that creationists don't believe in natural selection, that we believe God created all creatures as we see them today, that creation makes no predictions, etc.), by the fact that there are very large differences between creation and ID (i.e. creation holds the Bible to be true, including Genesis, whereas ID does not necessarily believe the Bible at all, creation usually believes in a young earth, ID, so far as I've read, never does, creation forms it's opinions because of what the Bible says [which doesn't mean they are not scientific], whereas ID forms it's opinions based on the evidence seen by the researchers)and yet evolutionists are unable to grasp the differences (which isn't surprising since they can't grasp the unbelievably obvious fact that unobserved, unrepeatable, untestable goo-to-you evolution is not the same thing as observed, repeatable, and testable natural selection.)
The problem with the creation evolution debate is, neither position is testable or repeatable in the lab. Obviously if we creationists are right, then creation is complete and it's not going to happen again, so we'll never be able to prove it. If evolutionists are right then it's such a slow process that we'll never observe it happening, so again, we can't prove it. All we can do is interpret the evidence from the past through our worldviews which we hold for different reasons. I believe in God for various reasons and I believe the Bible is his word. I don't believe that science should be thrown out if it disagrees with the Bible, but I do believe that if it disagrees with the Bible then it's not time to settle on it. Real science won't disagree with how God said he did things. And there is nothing at all that you can do in a lab that does disagree with it. And if you can't repeat it in a lab, then what you believe is only your (or probably someone else's)opinion or interpretation of what happened. That doesn't mean it isn't science, it just means that it's not hard science.
Whereas you likely don't believe in God for whatever reason. Probably because he's been ridiculed so much by people you believe to be smarter than you, or maybe because you believe life is too unfair or whatever. It doesn't matter really. The point is, you won't settle on anything that requires God. Or even allows for him. So you need to form theories for how things could have gotten the way they did if everything had been going on just as it has since the beginning of time (i.e. radioisotopes have always been decaying at the rate they do today, there was no catastrophic worldwide flood so the continents had to form slowly, etc.) That's fine. You're allowed to do that.
The thing is, we both have the same evidence. If we can both come up with models that fit the evidence then the only reason to choose one or the other is our starting bias. You don't believe in God. But you know what? If there is a God, and he did do the things he said he did, you're never going to arrive at the right answer with your methodology. Creation would have been a miracle, which by definition is when God does things that do NOT happen by themselves in nature.
On the other hand, if there is no God and nature really is all there is, then us creationists will be wrong. But who really cares because all we are doing is going to disappear eventually anyways and once that happens it'll be just the same as if none of this ever happened.
I guess the real point here is to figure out which will benefit the world more. So far creation is kicking ass with bonus points for inventing science in the first place (or I suppose I should say, discovering science), but forget that. Starting at the point when both are considered different but equal options, figure out which produces the most advances in science. And the one that loses is discarded.
I know creationists would be eager to accept such a deal. I doubt evolutionists would though. They seem to be fearful lot. Or better yet, forget ditching one. Just let the kids decide for themselves which they'd like to study. I'm sure the lesser would weed itself out on it's own. This is actually what creationists want. I think the evolutionists know that. Creationists have nothing to fear from such an arrangement. I don't know for sure that evolutionists do, but they sure act like they do.
If a person says that evolution arguments are the same as smoking arguments, that person is what we commonly refer to as an idiot. You see, we can test smoking in a lab. People are smoking right now. There is someone somewhere smoking a cigarette, both as I write this and as you read it. We are able to repeat the process over and over and over again. There are no lower life forms becoming humans right now. There are no lower life forms becoming higher life forms right now. We can not do it in a lab. We can perform artificial selection in a lab. But that's not evolution. We can observe natural selection in nature, but that's not evolution either. We can take some dogs and breed them to almost any shape and size, but in the end they are still dogs.
You want evolution to be a fact then you need to breed them until they aren't dogs anymore. That is what you have to do to firmly state that evolution has happened. But no one does that. You know why? It can't happen. Evolution is not empirical science. It has not and can not be tested. It is not natural selection. There is nothing in all of science to suggest that natural selection could have led to the incredibly diverse creatures we have today.
Evolutionists are forever talking about creation and ID as though they aren't science. They get away with it because they are talking to people who don't bother to learn about creation or ID firsthand, but instead take the word of non-creationists and non-IDers. This is proven by the constantly repeated straw man arguments (i.e. trying to say that creationists don't believe in natural selection, that we believe God created all creatures as we see them today, that creation makes no predictions, etc.), by the fact that there are very large differences between creation and ID (i.e. creation holds the Bible to be true, including Genesis, whereas ID does not necessarily believe the Bible at all, creation usually believes in a young earth, ID, so far as I've read, never does, creation forms it's opinions because of what the Bible says [which doesn't mean they are not scientific], whereas ID forms it's opinions based on the evidence seen by the researchers)and yet evolutionists are unable to grasp the differences (which isn't surprising since they can't grasp the unbelievably obvious fact that unobserved, unrepeatable, untestable goo-to-you evolution is not the same thing as observed, repeatable, and testable natural selection.)
The problem with the creation evolution debate is, neither position is testable or repeatable in the lab. Obviously if we creationists are right, then creation is complete and it's not going to happen again, so we'll never be able to prove it. If evolutionists are right then it's such a slow process that we'll never observe it happening, so again, we can't prove it. All we can do is interpret the evidence from the past through our worldviews which we hold for different reasons. I believe in God for various reasons and I believe the Bible is his word. I don't believe that science should be thrown out if it disagrees with the Bible, but I do believe that if it disagrees with the Bible then it's not time to settle on it. Real science won't disagree with how God said he did things. And there is nothing at all that you can do in a lab that does disagree with it. And if you can't repeat it in a lab, then what you believe is only your (or probably someone else's)opinion or interpretation of what happened. That doesn't mean it isn't science, it just means that it's not hard science.
Whereas you likely don't believe in God for whatever reason. Probably because he's been ridiculed so much by people you believe to be smarter than you, or maybe because you believe life is too unfair or whatever. It doesn't matter really. The point is, you won't settle on anything that requires God. Or even allows for him. So you need to form theories for how things could have gotten the way they did if everything had been going on just as it has since the beginning of time (i.e. radioisotopes have always been decaying at the rate they do today, there was no catastrophic worldwide flood so the continents had to form slowly, etc.) That's fine. You're allowed to do that.
The thing is, we both have the same evidence. If we can both come up with models that fit the evidence then the only reason to choose one or the other is our starting bias. You don't believe in God. But you know what? If there is a God, and he did do the things he said he did, you're never going to arrive at the right answer with your methodology. Creation would have been a miracle, which by definition is when God does things that do NOT happen by themselves in nature.
On the other hand, if there is no God and nature really is all there is, then us creationists will be wrong. But who really cares because all we are doing is going to disappear eventually anyways and once that happens it'll be just the same as if none of this ever happened.
I guess the real point here is to figure out which will benefit the world more. So far creation is kicking ass with bonus points for inventing science in the first place (or I suppose I should say, discovering science), but forget that. Starting at the point when both are considered different but equal options, figure out which produces the most advances in science. And the one that loses is discarded.
I know creationists would be eager to accept such a deal. I doubt evolutionists would though. They seem to be fearful lot. Or better yet, forget ditching one. Just let the kids decide for themselves which they'd like to study. I'm sure the lesser would weed itself out on it's own. This is actually what creationists want. I think the evolutionists know that. Creationists have nothing to fear from such an arrangement. I don't know for sure that evolutionists do, but they sure act like they do.