The Official Perfection KOs Creationism Thread Part Five: The Revenge of Mike Shermer

Well, I think it's time with the closing of the to stir the old pot again!
Let's first put down links to the first few:
Part one
Part two: The Empiricists Strike Back!
Part three: The Return of the KOing!
Part four: The Genesis of Ire!

This thread will be started start the new thread for the following reasons:
1. So Evolutionists get the first word
2. To enlighten the masses to the evidence for evolution including: evolutionists unaware of some of the fascinating evidence, those in the middle who need to see the light, creationists to combat the notion that evolution has no evidence and that creationism is scientific.
3. So I can set up some fair ground rules to make the thread more fun.
4. Sadistic Pleasure
5, The old thread was (well, will be) closed

The Rules:
1. No swamping the thread with articles. If you feel an article would be appropriate you may post it, but please only one per response. Also do not just post some random article, please use it as a means to augment your arguement, not as your arguement.
2. No yelling at someone to read a book. You want to post an exerpt from a book as part of your arguement, be my guest. However, yelling at someone to read a book is not going help.
3. We are arguing scientific credibility, therefore religious texts are not by fiat correct. If you want to argue religious philosophy go to this thread. Please stay on topic
4. All standard forum rules apply, especially the no flaming, trolling and spamming rules. While one may consider their opposition to be incorrect let's not assert that they are not intelligent.

Here's my claims:
1. Evolution is a valid scientific claim
2. Creationism is not a valid scientific claim
Note: When I refer to creationism I'm refering to god creating life directly (not through evolution), this includes such permutations as intelligent design theory, gap creationism as well as literal 7-day creationism. I am not refering to evolutionary creationism.

As always I'll start wtih a little topic starter:

In science the normal route for theories are they are posited by cadre of perponants and then immediately tried to to be ripped apart be the rest of the scientific community. Only those that can survive that onslaught make it into the textbook. Evolution has survived this onslaught for many many decades and has become one of those celebrated theories that emerge through all attempts to break it.

Why should we then believe that the errors in this theory has been somehow missed by the scientific community? If we are to believe the creationists, what made scientists so stupid? I can't think of a single thoery that was ever held to neerly the same esteem as evolution from the scientific community that was demonstrated to be completely false, so why this one?

 

Well, it's not related to Evolution (it probably is, actually!), but:

What's the Genesis of Ire?
Who's Mike Shermer?

 

Shermer is the President of the Skeptics Society and publisher of Skeptic magazine. He was a former fundamentalist Christian, and whose latest book is Why Darwin Matters.

 

All Perfection KOs Creationism threads are named after movie sequals
Empricists Strike Back = Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the KOing = The Return of the King
The Genesis of Ire = The Goblet of Fire
The Revenge of Mike Shermer = The Revenge of Micheal Meyers

Uber cool skeptic dude: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micheal_shermer

 

Very creative!

 

Have we found a huge boat relic on Mt. Ararat?

 

why the effort? if i have to argue with someone if creationism is a scientific theory or not, i might as well sit back and stare at the wall for a few hours...
the only way one couldnt be persuaded by the arguments (traits a scientifc theory must have per definitionem) is by not listening...

 

So as a non-scientist, this is one of the things I can read about and actually understand to a large extent. From what I've read, the standard answer has been something about "science has been wrong before". When you ask for examples the tendency is to cite examples of science that were well before the development of the modern rigorous methodology of science and theory-confirmation.

 

Exactly, for Creationists to sucessfully explain the world, they would also need to explain how evolutionists came to be so wrong.

 

Another point to add (first mention somewhere on Talk.Origins websites): If this is a new fancy theory, why does it have to introduced into the schools as so as possible?

It should also be noted that the theory of evolution has produced many practical results as well.

One response is to claim that the scientific community is biased against non-Darwinian theories because of philosophical or (anti-)religious reasons.

 

I find it ironic how people determine that science was "wrong" because the self-correcting mechanisms of science have changed the predominant viewpoint.

 

I've seen examples wherein Creationists will attack one newish subfield that draws upon evolution, thinking that this constitutes a critique of evolution as a whole. In the linked example you can see it applied to evolutionary psychology as it applies to the law, which is obviously very tangential to evolution as such. What's funny about that particular example, as you'll see in the second comment of the blog post, is that the people who actually authored the paper rag on ID in that very paper.

 

Genesis doesn't deny evolution, quite the contrary - Adam and Eve and the knowledge of good and evil describes two animals becoming human. And if you study the religious explanations (myths) about the origin of the Earth, the science supports religion.

 

This shift in our understanding of reality did not occur overnight but has taken place almost imperceptibly over many decades.

http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=40

 

Genesis clearly denies evolution as well as a host of other scientific disciplines. For your convenience I am NOT LISTING the mistakes that contradict cosmology, astronomy, etc., just the passages that directly contradict evolution...

1. Genesis says God created plants before the sun (one day before; one of many cases where the longer you say the days were, the more ridiculous Genesis becomes). Wrong, as the Sun and other stars are billions of years older than the Earth. Also clearly one of the stupider passages in Genesis as plants cannot survive without sunlight.

2. Genesis says God created land plants long before (2 days before) he created animals. Wrong, eukaryotes (which includes plants and animals) evolved in the sea originally and only later spread to land.

3. Genesis says God created life in the sea and air on the same day, and a day before life on land. Wrong, birds evolved from land-dwelling reptiles.

4. Genesis says God created land-dwelling animals and insects ("creeping things") a day later. Wrong, insects predate mammals considerably; land dwelling mammals precede sea-dwelling mammals (the "great whales" mentioned in the previous day).

5. Genesis says God gave all animals "green herb for meat." Wrong, since the earliest eukaryotes some animals have been carnivores.

That's all the mistakes I found in Genesis 1, although I have a feeling that when I read it a couple years ago I found more.

Genesis 2-4 (the second account of Creation, and the garden of Eden story) say NOTHING that is "supported by science" because they don't make scientific statements. Actually, the one time Genesis 2 ventures an attempt at chronology, it turns out to be even more WRONG than Genesis 1 - it says God made Adam before plants.


When you subtract all the MISTAKES in Genesis, what do you have left? Nothing. Certainly not a parable about "two animals becoming human" that is "supported by science."

If Genesis is an account of direct creation... it's wrong.

If Genesis is an account of how God evolved life on earth... it's still wrong.

If you believe God caused evolution to happen, then you damn well don't believe Genesis.

 

You didn't show me where Genesis denies evolution. You challenged the sequence of events as if that is a denial of evolution. Does that mean Darwin (or anybody else) denied evolution if he got the sequence of events wrong?

You're mixing up two storylines (different authors sometimes overlapping each other) and confusing celestial events before life appeared with events after life appeared. Genesis describes how the land came to be and the first life on land - plants. Then Genesis describes the celestial vault and proceeds to the waters or Seas and the swarming winged critters that took to the air and then took to the land. Sounds like insects, not birds. I'd say the author did a damned good job given the assumed state of knowledge at that time.

The sun is present in the story early on before the Earth (dry land) appears, "Let there be light" and let the light separate from the darkness - these are day and night. Thats describing a spinning planet in close proximity to a star.

In the beginning does not refer to the beginning of the universe, or even this solar system. It refers to the beginning of the creation of Heaven and Earth - Heaven is the firmament dividing the waters and Earth is the dry land. Nowhere does Genesis say God created the waters or this planet.

I didn't ask for mistakes

The story makes a scientific statement about human consciousness - a recognition that we were animals and that becoming human involved the knowledge of good and evil.

No, it says the man was made before God planted the Garden.

Genesis (and most of the world's creation myths) describes the following:

A proto Earth covered with water
a celestial battle of some kind produces a new world
The "Earth" (dry land) appears from underneath the waters
life appears and so do we

You got science disproving that? Astronomers have already claimed the Earth was struck by a Mars sized object around 4 bya (there's your celestial battle). Geologists have already confirmed plate tectonics as the mechanism for continent building and land formation, a process that produced elevation which allowed for the waters to gather in to Seas.

 

genesis is a myth written long before any scientific theories about evolution or the beginning of the universe (or even about the universe) were in existance. if it doesnt deny evolution this is merely coincidence...
come on, its just a myth about the creation of the world and man, just like this one: http://www.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_16.html

(if you bother to read the link, have a look at the similarity between the greek creation myth and genesis, and between the apple story and prometheus bringing mankind the gift of fire, just that its not man who "sins" by becoming a conscious creature in this version)

 

1. Plants do not need the sun, they just need a source of light, which, according to Genesis was the among the first things created.

The rest of you pints are just assumptions based on assumptions.. The fact that the simplest are found first in the fossil record could have happened a way that you did not know, because the last time I checked no one was around when these events happened. So you have to assume that what you just said is true, but you could be wrong. Just like I am assuming that what the Bible says. It basically boils down to what assumptions you want to believe.

 

I don't think noone being around at the time of the action makes a theory unsound, just because noone was around at the time a pilot light ignited a gas leak doesn't mean someone can't piece the event back together after the fact from clues seen on site (leaky gas pipes, explosion patterns, etc). This is true for evolutionary biology too, by using clues (fossil record, genetic/phenotypic distribution, observed natural and artificial selection, etc. etc. etc.) we can reconstruct history without being there.