Posted on 05/26/2007 4:48:47 PM PDT by celmak
PETERSBURG, United States (AFP) - Dinosaurs frolic with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and an animatronic Noah directs work on his Ark in a multimillion dollar creationism museum set to open next week in Kentucky.
Designed by the creator of the King Kong and Jaws exhibits at the Universal Studios theme park, the stunning 60,000 square foot (5,400 square-metre) facility is built for a specific purpose: refuting evolution and expanding the flock of believers in a literal interpretation of the Bible.
"You'll get people into a place like this that you can't get into a church with a stick of dynamite," said founder Ken Ham from his office overlooking the museum's manicured grounds.
Polls consistently show that nearly half of Americans believe God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. Only about 13 percent believe God played no part in the origin of human life.
Ham does not blame evolution per se for society's ills. He believes that sin has been around since Adam and Eve took their fateful bite of apple about 5,700 years before Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species."
But he says the theory of evolution has been used to undermine the validity of the literal truth of the Bible, heralding a dangerous age of moral relativism which can be blamed for everything from racism to the Holocaust.
Located just outside of Cincinnati near the intersection of the states of Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, nearly two thirds of the population of the United States lives within a 650-mile (1,050-kilometer) drive of the Creation Museum.
It is expected to draw at least 250,000 people a year when it opens on May 28.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Our education is not about questions with a predetermined answer in the same sense that your absolute belief in the Bible requires. Your belief requires that all answers about the natural world fit in with your interpretation of the contents, both real and imagined, of stories written long before the intricate knowledge we now possess. The only answers that are 'known' and expected to be learned by rote are those which have passed a battery of tests based on previous knowledge that has passed similar testing.
However, the particulars of most natural knowledge is up for debate and once the initial knowledge is acquired in the early years of education, questions about our world from the science outnumber the answers. Our education is all about, not just how to ask questions, but what new questions should be asked given an understanding of previous answers. You may feel that all questions should be considered, but this doesn't make sense in light of the vast amount of knowledge we now have, especially compared to that of previous generations.
"Not your idea of those who do not except evolution therefore they do not except science.
If you want to disregard all sciences which contribute to evolution (I'll use your all encompassing definition) then you pretty much have to disregard all of science, including physics.
Those that require we change how science is practiced are implicitly labeling themselves as antiscience.
For political or religious totalitarians, it is OK to have science that serves the state by producing weapons or approved products.
It is not acceptable to have an inquiring mind. Remember that the thirst for knowledge is the root of all evil.
Of course, you are aware that all of our nuclear arsenal is worthless since decay rates have changed and there is no longer a reasonable assurance that they will ever work.
Again with the screwed up understanding of the 2LoT.
Yes, some 'entropy' occurs, however the ability of a seed, or any other organism for that matter, to utilize available energy, which has to be equal to the 'order' created plus waste energy, allows those organisms to both repair damage (entropy) and to continue to increase local order. (Although I have yet to see a creationist give a rigorous definition to 'order' I'll use your 'intuitive' sense of the word). If the organism was not able to increase order at a faster rate than it suffers a decrease in order it would not be able to grow.
"The offspring of the tree getting weaker as mutations ever build.
Really? Is that why we find ever more robust (given their environment) plants and animals in the real world?
If what you say was true then, as long as we do not directly change the genome, we should not be able to selectively breed new plants and animals better suited to our needs. For example, a new poplar which grows as tall as a house in just four years, has increased cold weather survivability and is more resistant to drought has just been developed through an intensive 'selection' process where the genome was not directly enhanced. It was done just by using the selection techniques ancient man learned from nature.
Obviously this new tree is not weaker than its ancestors.
"That is not an example of order from disorder.
You can only make this statement because you have built a straw man to attack.
"There is so much complex order within the seed that they still do not understand, DNA RNA.
But you do? I really hope you are not suggesting that you understand the complexity of life and the physical constraints (Laws of Physics and others) which promote and destroy it better than the scientists who have been working with it for decades nor that you think you have found some essential part of natural law that they have somehow over looked.
I forgot to mention that this statement contradicts your entire argument. The parent plant had to 'build' the seed, so if the seed is not disorder but the parent plant is becoming more disordered then that disordered plant must have created a more ordered seed than itself, therefore order came from disorder. If the plant is still more ordered than the seed so that the plant did not have to create order from disorder then as the plant grows from the seed, the process of growth must create order (the plant) from a less ordered (the seed) state. That is order from disorder.
The only option you have is if the parent produces a less ordered seed which then grows into a plant no more organized than the seed itself.
This doesn't hold true either.
Let us consider the Populus trichocarpa, the ubiquitous Poplar tree. The poplar has about 500,000,000 base pairs, 40,000 genes in 19 chromosomes. There are plants with larger genomes and there are plants with smaller genomes but since this is the first tree sequenced it seems appropriate.
You have stated that mutations, or unforeseen changes in the genome, can only produce disorder (less order). However if we take a DNA sequence and make a change in it such as a mutation would, and cause some disorder we can then, in the very next generation change that sequence back to its original state, thereby increasing order once again. Since you say order cannot come from disorder then the reversal of a mutation cannot occur. This means that there will be no instances where a mutation causing disorder could be reversed so all mutations must occur on a single position no more than 3 times. If we start with 'A' at any given point then we can only change to 'T', 'C', or 'G'. For argument sake let's choose 'T'. The next generation can only change to 'C' or 'G' because it cannot return to 'A' without adding order. This time let's pick 'C'. Now the next generation can only have this particular loci change to 'G'. This is a required condition set by your claim that mutations can only result in a loss of order - no increase, no status quo.
If we assume a ridiculously low rate of mutation such as 1 per child plant and we know we have a genome of 500,000,000 then the Poplar should be unable to produce, or even survive after only 500,000,000 trees. What happens if we assume a much more realistic mutation rate of 10 mutations per child?
Now, how many Poplar trees do you think there has ever been on Earth? More than 300,000,000?
No, but repeating straw men and prevarications of what is actually part of evolutionary thought does show ignorance and lack of understanding.
If decay rates change, critical mass will vary up and down. At best you will get a North Korean type fizzle. At worst, premature detonation. As in friendly fire.
You have anywhere from 7 to 100 mutations that your parents do not have. Are you demonstrably weaker than they are?
Can you come up with some way of quantifying the information content of a genome? If not then you have absolutely no idea if mutations add, delete or leave information content the same.
Well, according to your reference (AiG), you are wrong.
From (Arguments Creationists should NOT Use)
“There are no beneficial mutations.”
This is not true, since some changes do confer an advantage in some situations.
You have to wonder why anyone in their right mind would accept the wholesale corruption of known laws of physics to support the words in a 2000 year old book.
I suspect that they probably have no real concept of physics except what they have learned from the anti-evolutionists ...
Actually the Bible is 3500 years old.
The things we see around us testify to the existence and power of God. The more we learn of the intricate nature of things, the more questions we have. We soon realize that what we don't know vastly exceeds what we do know. But what IS plain, is that none of this could possibly have arisen purely through chance and time acting on matter (which of course also begs the question of where the matter came from in the first place).
It is so exasperating to constantly hear evolutionists telling creationists that we are simply presenting religious views as science, while they are the keepers of true science. That is the pot calling the kettle black.
Evolution isn't science; not fact; not even a valid theory. It is like global warming - a fanatical religion, which is used to serve political ends.
Special Creation is supported by the fossil record. The Bible is not a science textbook, however it does not contradict the scientific principles that man has discovered, for its Author is also the Author of the Science that is behind what we see. He does not contradict Himself.
False. The bible was not recognized till 450 BC and the NT was written less than 2000 years ago.
Moses (1525 BC through 1405 BC) wrote the first 5 books of the Old Testament. Job may have been written even earlier than that.
Man's formal recognition of the OT Scriptures does not supersede the origin of their existence.
It was not the bible till man recognized it as the bible. Collections of old writings do NOT a bible make.
How many additions, deletions, translations and revisions have been made to those ancient writings in 3500 years?
Many refinements to the text have been made with the proliferation of manuscripts, absolutely true. However, the vast majority of these have to do with variations in spelling, or language expression. Basic doctrine has remained as it ever was.
Merely supposition.
I suppose you know better.
How is that plain? Do you have some inside information which physicists, cosmologists, astronomers, chemists and biochemists all lack? Care to publish that information and claim your Nobel?
"It is so exasperating to constantly hear evolutionists telling creationists that we are simply presenting religious views as science, while they are the keepers of true science. That is the pot calling the kettle black.
Since 'Creation Science' is all about matching physical evidence to the Bible through strange interpretations, poor methodology or just corruption of the data, you would be hard pressed to call it science in any way shape of form.
"Evolution isn't science; not fact; not even a valid theory. It is like global warming - a fanatical religion, which is used to serve political ends.
Sheesh, another 'argument by assertion' proponent.
Science is defined by its methods. Science evolves. It applies functional selection to weed out bad ideas.
The science of evolution is not one field, but a collection of many, each of them use well tested, effective scientific methodologies to discover the traits of nature. These fields are all interrelated, a discovery in one affects the rest.
"Special Creation is supported by the fossil record.
The transitionals found in the human, whale, reptile, bird, fish, bivalve lines, and many others would all disagree. The evidence of common descent in the genomes of many organisms would also disagree.
The age of the Earth, the distance of the stars, supernovae, the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt would all disagree.
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