What is creation science?

[El_Machinae]

No, no, no perceiving information requires intelligence. So does communication, obviously.

That a raindrop falls according to the formulas of Newtonian physics is not 'intelligence'. It's certainly information. We can see that falling drop, write down representations of those physical laws, and pass them around. The last two steps require intelligence, but seeing a falling drop doesn't really require intelligence er, more accurately, the raindrop doesn't need intelligence to fall according to Newtonian Mechanics.

Intelligence can even falsely perceive information, in that, it observes data and then arranges it in ways that are not true. This is as simple to prove as me saying 'the world looks flat to me'. In other words, intelligence perceiving things is what creates information.

I contend that most believers of this hypothesis do think natural law originated from this singularity, or else the big bang isn't an explanation of origins at all.

Kinda. It would've been the starting point of the natural laws that we're aware of, and that we describe. The Big Bang is, as you know, an unknown/non-understood Singularity, where all the maths break down (at least, until at least a few trillionths of a second). Since physical laws exist within a framework (the acceleration of an apple), it's a bit of a semantic headscratcher to ask whether 'the laws of apples falling' existed before apples did. I mean, in some ways they certainly did (at a meta-level), and in some ways they didn't. So, natural laws existed at a meta level at the earliest stages of the Big Bang, but they only actualized as their medium actualized.

This is why there's an ongoing debate as to whether the expression 'before the Big Bang' even makes sense. It's like saying "go South of the South Pole". In some ways, the expression makes intuitive sense, and in some ways it's kinda nonsensical.

 

[Arakhor]

Information is absolutely a measure of entropy; go and watch Veritasium's YouTube video on the subject. Given that he's actually a physicist talking about physics, presumably his video can be trusted.

 

[uppi]

Let me preface this post by saying The Bible quickly comes to mind when reading some of these posts. Specifically Romans 1:

I know that game of taking Bible verses out of context. Hint: chapter separations were added later and Romans 1 cannot be understood properly without Romans 2.

@uppi You are straining to minimize the task of the big bang origins hypothesis. You claim an explosion isn't an accurate description? Need I really find a quote to bring your common sense back into function? All of the matter and energy was condensed into a single point... and it's still expanding supposedly 13 or so billion years later. Just to humor you here's Merriam dictionary definition : a theory in astronomy: the universe originated billions of years ago in an explosion from a single point of nearly infinite energy density
You then claim natural law was already in affect when the big bang occurred. Again this is attempting to minimize the origins claim of this hypothesis. I contend that most believers of this hypothesis do think natural law originated from this singularity, or else the big bang isn't an explanation of origins at all. Cause then you have to explain where the natural law that governs the universe came from. You claim other mechanism can lead to the complexity we see. Well these are also hypothesis that fall short of intelligiblity.
It seems to me you are the one trying to misrepresent the big bang hypothesis.

No. The Big Bang is the hypothesis that the universe originated from a single point and the Big Bang theory is about the consequences of that. Nothing more. and anybody really understanding the Big bang will not claim that natural laws originated from it and will admit that they don't know where exactly they came from. Once you start losing sight of what you don't know, you are not doing Science anymore.

You claim information doesn't require intelligence and then equate information to entropy. Perhaps you do not understand entropy, as it is the observation that systems decline and breakdown. This in no way can describe the origins of information. You claim someone knowledgeable has equated information to entropy. I haven't read the guy, but I imagine he has common sense, so I assume you are misrepresenting his claim. Perhaps he equated thermodynamic entropy with information entropy, which has nothing to say about the origins of information.

You are proving my point: Claude Shannon is called the 'father of information theory' for good reason. By admitting that you are not familiar with him, you admit that you have no idea about the concept of information. There is no way to discuss the nature of information without at least discussing the works of Shannon.

Before you accuse someone of not understanding entropy, maybe you should take a course in statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Entropy is linked with decline and breakdown, but it plays a much more fundamental role than that. It is the reason we can have classical information at all.

 

[Luckymoose]

@djcollin: I'll wait for you to find Newton's explanation of creationist geology or evolution.

 

[Harv]

[When I get home, I can go get the book and make a more detailed citation - and then edit it in.]

Here is the quote I was thinking about.

After the Deluge

The Bible unequivocally teaches that the Genesis Flood was worldwide, not local. Since the Bible is infallibly true, this means there was a worldwide Flood, whether or not modern geologists are willing to believe it. Furthermore, a worldwide Flood could not have been a tranquil flood. A worldwide tranquil flood is a contradiction in terms, comparable to a tranquil explosion. The tremendous ability of moving water to erode and transport great quantities of sediment and heavy objects of all sorts is well known to all who have ever experienced even a local flood. In fact, most modern geologists believe that the majority of geological formations were produced in local floods or other local catastrophes; so it is obvious that a worldwide flood must have had worldwide geologic effects.

Especially, this must have been true in such a Flood as described in the Bible, caused by global eruptions and downpours continuing for 150 days. Such a Flood would have destroyed every earlier physiographic feature on or near the earth's surface, redepositing the eroded materials all over the world in stratified sedimentary rocks of the earth's crust.

Not only do such do such sedimentary rocks abound all over the world, but they give much evidence of having been formed by rapid and continuous depositional processes. Each individual stratum is a distinct sedimentary unit and, in most formations, can be shown by hydraulic analysis to have been formed within a few minutes' time. Furthermore, it can be shown that within a series of "conformable" strata, each subsequent stratum began to be deposited immediately after the preceding one. When the strata above and below a given interface are not conformable (such a surface is called an "unconformity" by geologists), then a significant time gap is indicated. However, since there are not worldwide unconformities, one can always find a place at which any given formation does grade conformably and imperceptibly into another formation above it, without a time gap.

The obvious conclusion from such syllogistic reasoning is that, since each unit in the geological column was form rapidly, and since each unit was followed immediately by another unit above it, therefore the whole column was formed rapidly! Thus, the geologic evidence demands a catastrophic, rather than a uniformitarian, explanation. For example if it is assumed (reasonably) that the average thickness of the sedimentary rocks around the word is one mine and the average rate of deposition during flooding conditions is one inch of compacted sediment every five minutes, then it would only take 220 days to form the entire column.

Source: Henry M Morris, "The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings," Copyright 1976, Published by Baker Books, Paperback Edition published 2009, Pages 203 to 204.

No source was cited in the entire passage, so I cannot research the issue any further. Granted - I think the emphasis in the title was "Devotional Commentary" over "Scientific."

Each individual stratum is a distinct sedimentary unit and, in most formations, can be shown by hydraulic analysis to have been formed within a few minutes' time.

It can be shown by hydraulic analysis? Where and when was this done? Then he goes on:

For example if it is assumed (reasonably) that the average thickness of the sedimentary rocks around the word is one mine and the average rate of deposition during flooding conditions is one inch of compacted sediment every five minutes

So he went from an individual stratum being shown by hydraulic analysis to being formed in a few minutes' time to an inch of sedimentary rock being formed in five minutes time. I have no idea where to look for work supporting this claim.

I was wondering if there was work out there in the Geology field that demonstrates that under approximately 90 MPa of water pressure, sedimentary rock will form at the rate of approximately 5mm per minute.

 

[timtofly]

I would say most Christians alive today are definitely not young earth creationists, nor have most Christians to ever live been YEC. YEC is a relatively new belief network promoted by Fundamentalist Evangelicals in the United States. You may find this hard to believe, but American Christians are far from the majority. To say people believe God created the universe is not to say they are a creation science supporter. There is a very big difference in what the Catholic or Orthodox or mainstream Protestant groups believe compared to the relatively small fundamentalists do (fundamentalist being a name they applied to themselves in the early 20th century).

I would agree with you that Christians today are not. Most if not all groups of Christians have evolved way past what the original term Christian referred to. If there had not been any evolution of thought, then we would not have had the reformation or the thousands of splinter groups that exist today. Parts of the reformation were the desire to get back to a more basic view, instead of the restrictive view that had grown contrary to the early church.

The only reason that YEC is a modern concept is because the original account has fallen out of the Christian world view. I do not see it as a Christian world view, nor a creationist world view. But no one is quite using the term Biblical world view. Most Christians do not even know what the Bible says, because human philosophy and interpretation by volumes have replaced the actual Bible and it has been set aside. It is what it is and does not give us a lot of information.

Whenever the tide turns to a more extremist view of naturalism that would tend to dismiss the Bible altogether, there is going to be an extremist kickback to bring views back into an agreeable norm. Most Christians would give up certain views and settle on the side of peace, especially if they have no knowledge whatsoever on the subject.

We are currently on the "big bang" concept. Even the extremist view that it started from a single "spot" has been debunked because the math cannot account for it to start out as one. But even the Bible states the heavens were stretched out like a curtain (Isaiah 40:22). Humans had thoughts and concepts in the Bible, but they did not have the technology or methods to prove them. The current knowledge does not contradict the Bible nor the Bible contradict the science. What is in contradiction is the time frame. The Bible does not say that the heavens where stretched out over a period of a few thousand years. Neither is there really a need to say that it took billions of years for the universe to stretch out. For one, all we can see is an accelerated and constant expansion. There is not enough time for things to be closer and if there has always been acceleration, too much time would have constellations so far apart we could never see them any more. The galaxies were closer together and the distance for light to travel was shorter and for that matter light could be slowing down as the universe expands. We have no proof that light cannot change it's speed, nor can we prove that light can.

Light can be manipulated by it's property so it is not implausible that it's speed can change. Not to point out that God is considered to be the light anyways. If God says there is no time, then there is no time. Light would have no speed then. It would not need time to get from point A to Point B. Something that humans in the Bible knew that could not be explained through a naturalistic view. Yet the Greeks placed it in their version of science fiction involving the capability of their god like creatures. It is known in part as teleportation, but humans have not mastered it yet. Not that they are giving up on the concept though.

Most ideas have just been relegated to a religion, yet it seems that even the Greeks were not relying on their stories through mere religious terms alone. If that were the case we should call all current super heroes as mere religious figures instead of science fiction or even fantasy for that matter.

 

[sophie]

Here is the quote I was thinking about.



Source: Henry M Morris, "The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings," Copyright 1976, Published by Baker Books, Paperback Edition published 2009, Pages 203 to 204.

No source was cited in the entire passage, so I cannot research the issue any further. Granted - I think the emphasis in the title was "Devotional Commentary" over "Scientific."



It can be shown by hydraulic analysis? Where and when was this done? Then he goes on:

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/6flood.htm

 

[brennan]

@brennan - information 'is just' a property of the arrangement of things? and are you implying this arrangement of things that produces information just happens by chance?

Any arrangement of things contains information. Chance has nothing to do with it.

attempting to minimize the origins claim of this hypothesis.

The 'Big Bang' isn't an origins claim. Maybe you should learn what you are talking about instead of patronising people?

The Big Bang was a name invented by opponents of the hypothesis in order to mock it. It does little justice to the notion of what the event actually was - the rapid inflation of spacetime (which is indeed not an explosion at all). Nor does the theory contain any notion of what caused the event - or if there was a cause at all. It is merely descriptive of the very early life of our universe as we know it. There are many theories that say the Big Bang happened within a pre-existing universe or that the event itself was merely a state change from a previous state of the universe, or even that the event was indeed the beginning of existence, but without a cause.

I'd like to draw attention to the fact that the alleged 'intelligent' creator that creationism inevitably requires is claimed not to require a cause. This is of course special pleading, since creationist exponents specifically deny the possibility of this in the case of anything else. Evidence in quantum mechanics on the other hand shows us that it is perfectly possible for things to come into existence without a cause, because it is happening all the time.

Perhaps you do not understand entropy, as it is the observation that systems decline and breakdown. This in no way can describe the origins of information.

Entropy is the notion that energy will inevitably tend towards a less ordered state over the lifetime of the universe. That would actually mean that information would seem to be increasing, since disordered systems require more bytes to store/describe than ordered ones. In actual fact the amount of information would remain the same, but would be significantly less compressible.

The notion of entorpy also ignores the fact that the creation of new information, via the spontaneous formation of matter is also a distinct possibility in an 'open' universe.

 

[Arakhor]

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/6flood.htm

That's an interesting article, which then led me onto this one about Biblical inerrancy and the flat Earth.

 

[Kyriakos]

No, no, no perceiving information requires intelligence. So does communication, obviously.

[...]

Maybe it is only a case of using different meanings for 'perceiving', but i would say that perceiving information requires any degree of having 'senses', and not needing to have 'intelligence'. For example a fungus will percieve (sense) if it is near a substance serving as a fungicide, and accordingly retreat from the borders to that substance. It does not have intelligence, but it does sense change, moreso if it is a threat.
One has to assume it has no 'notion' of a 'threat' either, but it clearly senses something against it, and is set to react to it.

Basically a sensory system (of whatever level) is a prerequisite for (potentially) having an intelligence as well. But a sensory system itself is the only basis for having a 'life' in anything. Which is why a computer has no life, while an ant has.

 

[El_Machinae]

You're very correct, and I agree. It caused some hiccups in my writing. You don't need qualia in order to intelligently respond to information (see: the plant climbing towards the sunlight). I'm not so sure, though, how to call "the predictable movement of the Sun across the sky" specifically "information" without there being an entity noticing and collating that data into a pattern.

Even perceiving 'intelligent behavior' ain't easy, because you quickly have to anthropomorphize intent onto the behaviour. Why does the plant climb towards the Sun? So it can grow and breed, I guess. That's us giving intent to a non-thinking organism. When, biochemically, it's not wildly more interesting than "why does the rain fall from the clouds"?

 

[Harv]

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/6flood.htm

It looks like you are telling me that there are many more examples.

Pseudoscience differs from science in several fundamental ways, but most notably in its attitude toward hypothesis testing. In science, hypotheses are ideas proposed to explain the facts, and they're not considered much good unless they can survive rigorous tests. In pseudoscience, hypotheses are erected as defenses against the facts.

I forgot to address in the passage I quoted above the claim that such a Deluge (15cm per minute) "would have destroyed every earlier physiographic feature on or near the earth's surface." Was there work done to support this claim? This claim also means that all physiographic features on the earth's surface were formed during or after the Flood.

Indeed, one wonders how Henry Morris, a hydraulic engineer, could ever have offered it with a straight face.

It is quite shocking. [EDIT: Supporting your hypothesis with your credentials.]

But the professional creationists who flog the public with their doctorates (earned, honorary, or bogus) have no excuse. Because they fail to submit their hypotheses to the most elementary tests, they fully deserve the appellation of pseudoscientist.

I am quite speechless, actually.

I never even gave thought to the number of fossilized animals. If it is claimed that all the fossils were created by the Flood, then it follows that all of animals were alive on the day the Flood began.

Many people are intimidated by numbers being fired at them in rapid sequence and it takes a very special kind of nerd to actually check through those numbers, every single one of them, from start to finish. This is also very difficult to accomplish in a formal debate setting, where facts matter so much less than personal magnetism, charisma, and the ability to present bulloney [sp intendended] as if truth. In a debate setting, the majority of people in the [general] audience would be unfamiliar with scientific reasoning.

As a simple example, can you work out in your head where I arrived at 90 MPa (13000psi) for water pressure?

 

[timtofly]

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/6flood.htm

It looks like you are telling me that there are many more examples.

Only six points of contention:

Fossils and Animals:

If you divide the 40,000 actual fossils found into 800 billion you get the fact that we need 20 million more archeologist to verify that amount.

Marine Fossils:

The supposed error is that if all the marine fossils came back to life there would be more than can be sustained over a 1500 year period. It would be nice if they had posted exactly how many metric tons that would entail. What would even be the mechanism used to deposit so much marine life on land to begin with? Humans currently remove over 100 million tons of marine life every year, and I doubt that is a very large percentage of what is available. That nothing could sustain that much marine life probably means that the decomposition was already ongoing at the bottom of the seas and was creating the large amounts of decomposed matter we see today.

Varves:

Most of the US was under water much longer after the flood. The formation did not have to take place just during the year long flood.

Disease Germs:

There is nothing that states that God cannot create or change things after day seven. The verse just states that what he did on the first 6 days was complete and finished. Whenever God cursed the earth many (moments, days, years, decades, millenniums) later, things did change. Then the flood changed everything again. Is it mandatory that the known diseases today could not have mutated in the last 2000 years?

Fossil Sequence:

Are we saying that there was no evidence whatsoever of hydraulic depositing? Would it be stranger to find plants at all at any level? I do not see how any one can explain how the flood actually worked. It may have been very catastrophic in one area and not so much in other areas. We don't know. IMO, some of the pyramids and other unexplained monolithic constructions were built before the flood, yet they survived while life around them perished. Obviously there were some plants that survived enough to be deposited as fossils, and they would have had to have been closer to the surface of the Flood to not be destroyed beyond recognition.

Overturned Strata:

Over turned strata would be where chunks of the whole process would have been heaved up and "carefully" overturned in a way to preserve the layers. Does it really matter how it happened? The crust shifts upward or downward and splits an area in sections and the separated sections move away, over, under, or are overturned in the process. Are we saying that water movement cannot do that? Why would water not be the perfect cushion to prevent overturned strata from breaking up further. If it crashed down onto a solid object it may not survive.

Bonus; Ice core samples:

If the Flood account is true it does not change the ice ages or records in the ice, all that has happened since the Flood. It would seem that would be harder to explain than even creation itself. IMO, there could be no ice at all before the Flood. It does not take years or a year to form a layer or boundary that can be used to state this was a year. After the flood and all the settling and even upheavals ongoing layers would have formed more quickly than they do today with more moderate weather patterns. The layers are tested in conjunction with known volcanic activity and the acidic levels deposited. Compared to the millions of years of time for things to happen for the rest of the world, the ice core samples show that it may have only been around 160,000 +- 15,000 years. A conservative estimate may even be 50,000 years. Reducing the time frame down to biblical standards it could have all formed after the Flood.

 

[Arakhor]

There is nothing that states that God cannot create or change things after day seven. The verse just states that what he did on the first 6 days was complete and finished. Whenever God cursed the earth many (moments, days, years, decades, millenniums) later, things did change. Then the flood changed everything again. Is it mandatory that the known diseases today could not have mutated in the last 2000 years?

You're missing the point of creationist excuses - everything in the Bible has a naturalistic reason for happening. "God did it" won't qualify.

 

[Harv]

Only six points of contention:

Can somebody please tell me: How much water pressure is required to turn sediment into rock at a rate of 5mm per minute?

What does 1600m worth of sediment look like in 9000m of water before it settles?

 

[uppi]

Can somebody please tell me: How much water pressure is required to turn sediment into rock at a rate of 5mm per minute?

What does 1600m worth of sediment look like in 9000m of water before it settles?

I have no idea what pressure would be required. But I do know that there are places in the ocean that are that deep and experience such pressure and the sediments are not turning into rock at 5mm per minute. Any argument relying solely on water pressure has to fail, because in any hypothetical flood that conserves the amount of water on earth, the pressure could not have been much different from what we have in the deeper parts of the oceans right now.

 

[timtofly]

You're missing the point of creationist excuses - everything in the Bible has a naturalistic reason for happening. "God did it" won't qualify.

Is the point of this post that God did not use natural forces or could not use natural forces?

I thought this thread was started on the basis that those who accept the Bible have no clue about science at all?

We cannot even settle the point that the book of Genesis was written as a scientific hypothesis. If it was, then modern humans have seemed to have debunked God and even God himself could not show up and redeem himself.

I can agree with the point that "fundamentalist" are scrambling to provide verifiable evidence to back up this ~4000 year old record. Perhaps saying "God did it" would best be left to the confines of the church building, but it seems that anything a person writes or speaks about is fair game for a topic. Even the term supernatural is misleading, because once it is knowledgeable it is not that super. I for one do no think that God is keeping people in the dark on purpose. he is just letting them decide with their own capabilities what is a fact or not. Humans are not even forced to be good and moral, why should they be forced to believe and accept the truth? Is God keeping us in the dark just on the merit that we can believe and accept a lie?

 

[Harv]

If you divide the 40,000 actual fossils found into 800 billion you get the fact that we need 20 million more archeologist to verify that amount.

I will try to get back to the rest of this later, but I have a question: Where did you get the number 40,000 from? Do you have the book by any chance? (I do not.)

Whitcomb, John C., and Henry M. Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.

 

[timtofly]

When Gordon Davison asked the director of the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontology
in Johannesburg how many Karoo fossils have actually been collected; he broadly estimated
around 40,000. Doing searches of the Bernard Price Institute do not bring up much information. They do advertise that there is a collection of 30,000 plant and insect fossils

 

[brennan]

How do you think fossils are found Tim?

Paleontologists do not spent the decades sifting through entire rock formations, they walk about, talk to locals and get to work on whatever is they find. This means that the actually obtained specimins are only those that are both exposed at the surface and spotted either by the paleontologists or by someone else who then tells the Paleontologists and also (crucially) by whether or not the specimin is considered worth collecting (a big therapod is going to be worth more than a million more ammonites). The proportion of fossils collected is therefore likely to be a tiny fraction of the whole.