Evidence for creationism

[Tacitusitis]

Convince me that God couldnt create organisms capable of evolution. Why couldnt he?

I'm not very religious, but this. Sure, God didn't create life as it is now. But couldn't he have breathed the first bits of life into the microbes that would eventually evolve into what the world is now, over countless years?

A god who would do this is contrary to the god of the Bible.

The god of the bible created a "very good" world in which humans were central. Humans then mucked it up bringing death, sin, and suffering into the world (Gen 3:16). This is the theological narrative that necessitates Christ as a substitutionary penal atonement for man's sin (yes, I know the jargon of this crap ).

You can't just say that "Whatever science says happened, God did it" (which is essentially what Mobby and Fox are saying). The theology of the Bible commits you to defending a specific natural history of the universe: a "very good" primeval state, that had humans in it, followed by a "fallen" world.

If our science found out this account was true then that would be a point in favor of the Biblical narrative.

But on the contrary science says that the universe has been "fallen" (i.e. contains death, entropy, suffering, disorder) from the very beginning, had no improved primeval state, and humans are a late arrival.

Your choices as a Christian are

a) deny the science (young Earth Christian of the Smidlee and Ken Hovind type)
b) argue that science and religion are separate spheres (non-theological Christian who essentially just believes in Christ as a good role model)

A) is wrong because, well, it's stupid on its face.

B) is wrong because as I said the theology of the Bible implies testable statements about the history of the universe.

Insofar as it's testable with our current science, the Biblical hypothesis of the state of the early universe is a flop. If you accept the science, well then man evolved, ergo Adam never existed, ergo Paul was wrong, ergo Jesus didn't die for our sins, ergo if this universe was created by a god then that god certainly doesn't have the same characteristics as the god described in the bible.

 

[Berzerker]

I don't know. I think maybe a bit further out than where the Earth is now. Then, orbital decay meant we've gotten closer to the Sun.

A collision can cause "orbital decay", but we'd have to travel ~2-3x further out to find enough water to supply our oceans. Btw, an astronomer (Van Flandern?) came up with a theory back in the 50s (I think) dealing with the spacing of the planets. If we remove Earth from its current position and place it at the asteroid belt, the planets would be in a 2:1 ratio - Venus twice as far as Mercury, Mars 2x the distance of Venus, the asteroid belt 2x Mars' distance, and so on all the way out to Uranus. Neptune is the first planet to fall outside this ratio... It would seem 10 AU (about a billion miles) has enough material to build a planet that far away from the Sun. I dont remember if Van Flandern's formula placed Earth beyond Mars or was based on the Earth forming here.

I don't understand the question. What do you mean by 'here'? Yes, it occured on Earth. What else is there to say?

This orbit = "here". If the Earth was struck by a Mars sized object "here", we'd see evidence of the collision. We dont see that evidence...here. We see evidence of a collision further away from the Sun, where its much darker

The debris turned into the Moon.

The Moon is not a Mars sized object, but it is awfully large for such a small parent body. Another anomaly... Only Pluto (and thats a "double planet") has a larger moon in comparison to its parent. Regardless of when the Moon formed (4.5 bya or whatever), the evidence shows the Moon was already present when the Earth got hit by something ~4 bya during - at the start of - the late heavy bombardment. Thats why the side facing us has vast lava filled basins dated to after that bombardment and why the "dark side of the moon" does not. Thats evidence the Moon was a witness to the collision that slammed the Earth prior to plate tectonics - "dry land" - and life.

Well, the early solar system was a chaotic place. The orbits hadn't stabalised yet, and the gas giants and the moon weren't shielding us from asteroids and comets like they do now. Plus, we didn't have as much of an atmosphere to burn the bigger stuff.

The Enuma Elish (Babylonian Epic of Creation) describes such a situation, but the gas giants lie beyond the asteroid belt. Our atmosphere doesn't burn the bigger stuff just the small stuff. The problem is that the cometary theory is based on the existence of the Oort Cloud - and that theory was designed to explain nearby comets.
Again, if the Earth had oceans 4.4 bya then the comet theory falls apart, it was formulated before we knew the age of the Earth's oceans - and plate tectonics (the first evidence anyway) followed a collision ~4 bya, and life was quick to follow that event. As of now, the science is telling us the Earth (biblical "dry land") did not exist 4.4 bya - the water did. The proto-Earth was covered by water and the dry land did not appear until after the late heavy bombardment ~4 bya and plate tectonics...

Except they didn't. They supplied the atmosphere.

Until someone came up with the cometary source for our oceans the theory was volcanic outgassing gave us the water. But that means the water was already here too. That doesn't make sense, the forming Earth would have been starved of water vapor - if the Earth formed here. Now that some people are finding problems with the comet theory, a new theory has come to light - asteroids delivered Earth's water. All or most of these problems disappear if we simply place the forming Earth where the asteroids (and water) are found.

Why count the Moon? That's not a planet. Why not count the hundreds of moons of the gas giants? Saturn's moon Titan is bigger than our Moon. Why doesn't that count? And Pluto isn't a planet. If Pluto is a planet, why not count other Kupier Belt objects of a similar size?

Because the Moon and Pluto played roles in the creation story.

Again, no evidence for this twin 'proto-Earth'. Like I said, if it existed, we would have found it.

It aint a twin, its the (larger) proto-Earth... The Earth as it was before the collision, a water covered world devoid of both life and the plate tectonics that would build the continents following the late heavy bombardment 4 bya.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Aside from your narrative being a tenuous tissue of non-science-ness, you're also transplanting your modern viewpoint onto the ancient texts.

The ancients certainly did not conceive of the earth as a planet, or of the sun as a star.

The ancients believed in a dome cosmology. If you've ever seen the movie The Truman Show, it's a good parody of the idea.

The Hebrews believed the Earth was a flat disc floating on cosmic waters ("the deeps"). Above the earth was a solid dome ("firmament" in the KJV) to which the stars were affixed and which the sun and moon traversed. Above the firmament was a second cosmic ocean (God divides "water from water" with the firmament). The heavenly ocean is where rain comes from.

This is the cosmogony that is clearly and literally described in Genesis. Complete with windows in a heavenly attic that God opens to make it rain.

They were not alone in believing this, the Babylonians and the Sumerians had the same ideas together with prescientific civs across the globe. They all believed that just like Jim Carrey you could travel to the end of the earth and touch the start of the sky.

This sort of just-so-story is exactly what someone who didn't know their butt from their ankle would come up with.

Thought Process Of An Ancient Hebrew/Sumerian/Babylonian
1. What is rain all about?
2. The water falls from the sky, so that must mean it's stored up there.
3. It doesn't come down all the time, so that must mean there's something keeping it up there.
4. God must open windows in the sky to let water come down.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Here is a massive but interesting paper on the topic by respected theologian Paul H Seely.

Ever since reading this devastating paper I see all the flood theories, canopy theories, collision theories, etc, as being rather silly attempts to deny that the authors of the bible

*were prescientific
*did not have access to a prescient/advanced/divine source of knowledge
*were PLAIN WRONG in describing how the world works

 

[Traitorfish]

were PLAIN WRONG in describing how the world works

You mean... Pi isn't three?

 

[_random_]

You mean... Pi isn't three?

No. You don't understand. The diameter was measured from outside the rim and the circumference was measured from the inside. So when God set out to write a math textbook, he was woefully unclear and lacking in mathematical principals, but he wasn't wrong.

 

[Traitorfish]

No. You don't understand. The diameter was measured from outside the rim and the circumference was measured from the inside. So when God set out to write a math textbook, he was woefully unclear and lacking in mathematical principals, but he wasn't wrong.

So God's an idiot, then? That sort of makes sense, actually- any creator worth his salt would've rounded Pi off to three in the first place, saved us all a bit of effort.

 

[carlosMM]

No, no- being conceived. "Life from conception", and all that.

but "born in sin" - I never heard anyone claim that we are ejaculated in sin

Can we discuss the nature of God in a different thread? We were actually starting to get a creationist discussion going.

and what you get is evidence against creationsim - no creator, no creation. That easy

 

[Methos]

Just like cold is the absence of heat and darkness is the absence of light, then one could argue that the devil is the absence of good, or more appropriately, the absence of God.

Well, it kinda makes sense. There are rules of reality that God is beholden to, and so it makes sense that there are areas of the Universe (the multiverse) where God would not be.

It's an interesting argument to consider and fun to contemplate.

A question for the non-believers: The big bang theory states/implies that there was nothing before the event and that ever since the event, that space has been growing. Think of a large blast wave steadily pushing itself further and further from the source of the big bang event. My question is, what existed before and what exists on the other side of the expanding wave? More importantly, what are we expanding into and where is this vast "space" coming from that our universe is expanding into? I hope I phrased that clear enough.

 

[Perfection]

My understanding is thus:
The universe is infinite but we can only observe a finite portion of it (the observable universe, often just called "the universe")
the big bang occurred at all points in space
Space itself expanded and the universe lowered in density.

Before the big bang is unknown, but it could well be that there is no "before the big bang", as the big bang denotes the beginning of time itself.

 

[carlosMM]

It's an interesting argument to consider and fun to contemplate.

A question for the non-believers: The big bang theory states/implies that there was nothing before the event and that ever since the event, that space has been growing. Think of a large blast wave steadily pushing itself further and further from the source of the big bang event. My question is, what existed before and what exists on the other side of the expanding wave? More importantly, what are we expanding into and where is this vast "space" coming from that our universe is expanding into? I hope I phrased that clear enough.

As perfection in part pointed out, "before" and "where" and "what" have no meaning outside our space-time continuum. There is no "before" the Big Bang, because there was no time we can in any way measure. There is no "what" the universe expands into, because there is neither space nor matter we can measure outside the universe.

 

[Perfection]

As perfection in part pointed out, "before" and "where" and "what" have no meaning outside our space-time continuum. There is no "before" the Big Bang, because there was no time we can in any way measure. There is no "what" the universe expands into, because there is neither space nor matter we can measure outside the universe.

I wouldn't say that this is strictly about measurement. We might say that there lies space time and energy beyond our observable universe even though we couldn't even in principle measure it. I think what's a little more correct is to say that the laws of our universe are such that time before the big bang did not exist nor is there some preexisting space the universe expands into.

 

[Tani Coyote]

If there was no need to prey upon each other in Heaven, then why did the Devil feel the need to rebel? Obviously, he had unsatiated needs. Alternatively, he just knew God better than we do.

Well, that assumes that the Biblical Satan is correct. I'm not a Bible expert, but if I recall, didn't he rebel because he wanted more power and influence? Sounds like greed and vanity originated with him; being a top angel wasn't enough.

I think the Islamic Satan is more interesting - he was cast out because he refused to defy an earlier order God had given.

There's also the theories that Satan - or Lucifer - has repented, desires to repent, or may be an agent of God. If there's an angel of death, why not an angel of divine justice?

An interesting point about the devil. I'm still wondering why a God of perfect goodness would create such complete evil. Boredom and want for a cosmic chess opponent?

Well, as most of us civvers know, complete power gets boring; challenges are needed, and this is why the greatest empires disappear.

Going by the Bible's account(from what I recall anyone from my scarce readings, anyway), it sounds like he was an angel high in the hierarchy of heaven. But, like all his creations, Lucifer was given free will, including the power to do evil.

God created evil in the sense of giving us all the choice to indulge in it, from the weakest human to the strongest divinity. As I've said, you may not as well be able to choose if you only have one choice. As a result, he increased the number of choices... even if it was a moral dilemma. But, free will, from what I can gather, is his key value.

Well, the devil cannot be 'complete evil', because it would have to be omniscient to excise all the good from its personality.

Well, whose to say the Devil couldn't be omniscient? They may say knowledge is power, but all the knowledge in the world wouldn't give the Devil the power to defeat an omnipotent being if he is not himself omnipotent.

Can we discuss the nature of God in a different thread? We were actually starting to get a creationist discussion going.

Well, I did try to start a thread on God's qualities, but no one seemed interested in taking the discussion there...

A god who would do this is contrary to the god of the Bible.

Good thing the God of the Bible is just a source of inspiration for me, rather than a literal God.

The theology of the Bible commits you to defending a specific natural history of the universe: a "very good" primeval state, that had humans in it, followed by a "fallen" world.

It only commits those who believe in it as the true, uncorrupted word of God; I do not.

Insofar as it's testable with our current science, the Biblical hypothesis of the state of the early universe is a flop. If you accept the science, well then man evolved, ergo Adam never existed, ergo Paul was wrong, ergo Jesus didn't die for our sins, ergo if this universe was created by a god then that god certainly doesn't have the same characteristics as the god described in the bible.

All fair points if one takes the stories of creation literally; if I was a Christian, I would only think of them as metaphors and other stories meant to demonstrate points. Sin could have begun across the species as a whole upon the evolution of sentient thought and conscience, but the story of Adam, Eve, and their children - the roots of humanity - is probably easier to relate to. Never mind that it strokes our ego, the stories; who is to say that God has not created species on distant worlds?

For me, acknowledging one does not know everything is the key to possibly knowing everything; you must know you lack knowledge in order to search for it.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's an interesting argument to consider and fun to contemplate.

A question for the non-believers: The big bang theory states/implies that there was nothing before the event and that ever since the event, that space has been growing. Think of a large blast wave steadily pushing itself further and further from the source of the big bang event. My question is, what existed before and what exists on the other side of the expanding wave? More importantly, what are we expanding into and where is this vast "space" coming from that our universe is expanding into? I hope I phrased that clear enough.

Do you really care? I'm not being facetious. I care. I find it fascinating. In my estimation, It would probably take about 80 hours of honest effort to learn enough to build a decent conception of the best thinking on this topic. It's not something that can be explained in a few paragraphs, because it's complicated and it's non-intuitive thinking.

Do you have courses in calculus and linear algebra under your belt? I found thinking regarding multiple dimensions to be much easier once I got a feel for those two types of maths

Anyway, if you don't have a lot of time to devote to this, I found this astronomy professor's seminar to be quite good. His talk is intended for a lay audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPkGEVgOJK0

But, please keep in mind that MIT and UC Berkeley have entire courses on cosmology available (online, for free). As in, multiple courses of 22 hours in total, dealing with teaching what we know about these questions.

You can't just say that "Whatever science says happened, God did it"

Sure you can! If you want to believe in God, then one of the ways of determining its nature is to figure out what it's done. You'd carefully try to figure out the nature of God using logic and reason (and maybe some emotion) and the build upon that conception by examining the natural world.

You'll quickly spin away from Christianity, because too much of Christianity is built upon 'a foundation of sand'. Too many of the people in the OT and the NT didn't have an accurate, or even reasonable, conception of the Creator (if it exists). They'd justified their theology with completely false statements, and so can be ignored. But, if we're going to examine the idea of a Creator, then we use nature.

I think this is important. One can try to understand God, and not be Christian. If merely holding onto the Christian god, as conceived by tradition, that's tough.

 

[Arakhor]

b) argue that science and religion are separate spheres (non-theological Christian who essentially just believes in Christ as a good role model)

That would be me. I was brought up as a Christian, so I accept that, in a spiritual sense, there is an almighty, benevolent deity looking after everyone and everything in the universe, as we are all children of God.

In a purely physical sense though, I accept modern scientific theory as the only logical, common sense interpretation of the cosmos.

 

[MobBoss]

A god who would do this is contrary to the god of the Bible.

I dont see it that way at all.

 

[Akka]

I dont see it that way at all.

Because carnivorous animals, diseases, natural disaster, senility and the like are DEFINITELY caused by not listening to God !

You're welcome to read the past few posts, which shows that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god is just a logical absurdity, considering the very state of the world - and not just the state of human decisions.

Not even ten posts above, you already had your answer.
Which already was an answer given not even ten posts above at the time.

Just another instance of :

Ignoring facts disproving your logical gaping holes won't make them go away, though that's the favourite tactics of people proved wrong.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Good thing the God of the Bible is just a source of inspiration for me, rather than a literal God.

Then to put it baldly, you're not a Christian.

I dont see it that way at all.

Not much of a counterargument...

 

[Tacitusitis]

Sure you can! If you want to believe in God, then one of the ways of determining its nature is to figure out what it's done. You'd carefully try to figure out the nature of God using logic and reason (and maybe some emotion) and the build upon that conception by examining the natural world.

I have no objection to this, for whoever is interested in thought exercises like that.

It seems logical that the creation is our best source of information about a creator.

But this "natural theology" or whatever you want to call it is very different from "apologetics," defending the truth of Christian theology and tradition.

Also the fact that science is wholly at odds with the Biblical creation-narrative implies that "RealGod" is radically different from "BibleGod." BibleGod made humans, as the culminating act of creation, to be stewards over everything else. Humans are clearly peripheral in RealGod's creation. BibleGod created a good world (that humans messed up). RealGod created a world that fails to be as good as we would try to make it, contains plenty of surplus evil and suffering, and is "fallen" from the beginning.

Arguably, RealGod is a pretty horrific being. Isn't atheism preferable?

 

[ParkCungHee]

Insofar as it's testable with our current science, the Biblical hypothesis of the state of the early universe is a flop. If you accept the science, well then man evolved, ergo Adam never existed, ergo Paul was wrong, ergo Jesus didn't die for our sins, ergo if this universe was created by a god then that god certainly doesn't have the same characteristics as the god described in the bible.

Those don't logically follow.