Creationist stakes $10,000 on contest between Bible and evolution

The Guardian ^ | March 25, 2013 | Amanda Holpuch

[EveningStar]

A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Dr Joseph Mastropaolo, who says he has set up the contest, the Literal Genesis Trial ...

[HerrBlucher]

Did you ever wonder, for instance, how they can trace Jesus’ lineage back to King David through Joseph considering it was a “virgin birth”?

From Pope Benedict's book "The Infancy Narratives":

Joseph is the legal father of Jesus. Through him, Jesus belongs by law, "legally," to the house of David. And yet he comes from elsewhere, "from above"--from God himself.

[drjimmy]

No I do not claim that dating is done just by measuring their thickness. Just like dating based on cores, you have to assume, and many assumtions are incorrect.
Now that you have acknowledged that the thickness of the ice isn't the measure of its age, since the Lost Squadron wasn't found under the ice sampled by the scientists as you claimed, your entire premise is blown away.

[allmendream]

Wrong again. The did not lose information. The information changed.

A bacteria that was formerly cold resistant can become a bacteria that is cold susceptible but heat resistant when exposed to heat stress. The bacteria didn’t “lose” the information on how to make itself cold resistant so much as it changed the information making; thus making itself heat resistant.

Expose it to cold and it can change back to being cold resistant through natural selection of genetic variation. What was lost?

To use your analogy it could lose an arm to not be arrested when not being arrested was advantageous - then grow the arm back again when having two arms was advantageous.

So why would bacteria under stress express a gene that increased the amount of mutations in its offspring?

[CatherineofAragon]

Well, Jesus referred to Genesis in a literal sense. And the NT writers treated it as a historical record. Why bother tracing the lineage of Jesus all the way back to Adam if Adam was metaphor/myth who didn’t exist?

[Tublecane]

“there are certain accepted words and their definitions that accompany them”

We’re not talking semantics, here. “You can’t prove a negative” is a cliche, and cliches may or may not he true. Either way, it has nothing to do with the accepted definitions of the words. Not everyone believes you can’t prove a negative, for the obvious reason that some you can prove, and easily.

There must be some truth to a cliche for it to catch on, and so it is with this one. But only a certain kind of negative is impossible to prove, and the literal meaning of Bible verses versus science isn’t one of them (depending on how you want to interpret “literal”). I find it the height of irony that the very phrase itself, “you can’t prove a negative,” is a negative. You can’t prove that you can’t prove a negative, if you take your assertion at face value. So why would you believe in your own dictum?

In closing I’ll quickly work out a syllogism to demonstrate the fallacy of nonproof of negatives. Imagine you are picked up by the police for shoplifting. They tell you where and when you were supposed to have committed this crime, and say the security footage can’t positively id the suspect, so they want to know if you have an alibi. You say you were across town in a different store at that time, and low and behold the cameras there got a good look at you. You are free to go.

Why? How does this work logically? Well, all you have to do is introduce a simple truism to demonstrate the alibi excludes the possibility of you having shoplifted:

Major premise
You were in store A at 7:00

Minor premise
A person cannot occupy two physical spaces at the same time

Conclusion
You could not have robbed store B across town at 7:00

[Zeneta]

Sorry but you have been misled.

All of evolutionary theory is about “random mutations” conserved so that “Natural selection”, read environment, can or will “ALLOW” certain mutations to survive.

It is all about death.

[Tublecane]

“Only if one takes a strictly-literalist approach to Genesis”

But that’s stipulated in the wager, which is what we’re talking about. Of course science could never comtradict the literary merits of mythology, if for instance we chose to read it that way.

[Tublecane]

Astronomy not that hard? I barely got through precalculus, and keep forgetting whether Jupiter or Saturn comes first going out from the sun. I could only ever understand it metaphorically or through analogy, which is what pop science is for. But that’s not the real thing.

[allmendream]

And your point?

Nevermind your obvious ignorance of neutral mutations leading to incorrect pronouncements.

Why would a bacteria have a gene for an error prone DNA polymerase? Why would it express it during stress, ensuring that when it devides into two ‘offspring’ it has MORE mutations?

Your inability to answer this rather simple question shows how useless your creationism is in explaining and predicting reality.

[jps098]

Not at all. You assume when I answer one part of your question, I answered the second. One does automatically exclude the other. You assume the way something is measured, means it was not done at all?

What's next, "When did I stop beating my wife?"

[Zeneta]

Try this one.

Prove that you and the world didn’t just come into existence, say 30 minutes ago, fully formed with memories and the material that surrounds you.

Unfortunately, this is where modern or Pop science is heading.

There has been a concerted effort to move reality into the “Meta-state”.

[Tublecane]

I’m not sure I understand your post.

[Tublecane]

“Jesus never got it wrong”

Considering the Torah was written hundreds of years before his birth, you could say he had a cheat sheet.

[Tublecane]

You found one I can’t prove, there. Which is something creationists can always throw at science believers. Call it the Descartes Malicious Demon card, or the Matrix card. However, this thread was about science contradicting the literal meaning of the Bible which is another matter altogether.

[allmendream]

Or last Thursday.

Last Thursdayism!

Creationism is very much like last Thursdayism.

Someone asks “Who invaded Normandy on D-day?”.

The last Thursdayist says “Nobody - nothing existed before last Thursday!”

Even if it was correct - it would be absolutely USELESS.

[Zeneta]

Why would a bacteria have a gene for an error prone DNA polymerase? Why would it express it during stress, ensuring that when it devides into two ‘offspring’ it has MORE mutations?

I don't know, maybe it wants to have that capacity ?

Maybe, it knew that it needed it ?

Maybe, the Giraffe knew it needed a longer neck to eat from the tall trees. And grew a heart capable to pump the blood and the valves to keep it's head from exploding when it drank from a pond.

The fact is, the number of changes required press your harsh hope against time.

There is NO EVIDENCE only stories.

When you look at the famous Darwinian "Tree of Life" the only "evolution" that occurs is among the lines and the ever changing stories that connect them.

[Teacher317]

Most of what gets called “science” WRT creation, is just psuedointellectual psycho-masturbation. There is no science there. It’s all media circus.

Umm, okay. Let's try a simple one. The speed of light is generally accepted as a fact (despite it's inexplicable omission from the Bible). Trigonometric basics like sine, cosine, and tangent, too. The distance to individual stars is pretty easily measured using the parallax. Again, since the ~93 million miles from the earth to the sun isn't mentioned in Psalms or Deuteronomy, some might have a problem accepting it, but let's skip proving it here. Basically, the angle that a nearby star moves through as the earth moves form one side of the sun to the other (yet another odd omission from Joshua Judges and Ruth, but the Wise and Holy Church still slaughtered plenty of people who insisted that we are heliocentric), we can use that angle and that distance and trigonometry to get the distance to said star.

Since most stars are more than 3.5X10¹⁶ miles (aka 6000 light years) away... and yet we still see the light from them that had to start travelling from said star to us, just for us to be able to see it... that means the galaxy is clearly more than 6000 years old. The light has been travelling for a far longer period of time.

Or is all that - Light and High School Math - just "psycho-masturbation"?

[WVKayaker]

There was nothing prior to the arrival of Adam, not even a universe.

Yes, my Bible definitely does say that.

Excuse me for butting in, but as a Bible believer (and former student at Elim Bible Institute, Lima, NY), I can ask for you to reconsider your "facts". The Bible does NOT say that.

God's entire creation, minus Adam and Eve, were created BEFORE they came into Eden. In addition, there is no reference to literal days, within those words, only supposition by Bishop Ussher and those others who accept his concept. It is similar to accepting the false assumptions in evolutionary theory.

I believe God created all. I do believe it was created a long, long time before Adam and Eve appeared!

Psalm 33: 9 For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm.

2 Peter 3:6 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

John 1: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. .

Genesis 1:The Beginning

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

[Teacher317]

[allmendream]

You don't know.

Obviously.

And you never will know.

You have no interest in knowing.

Your creationism is useless in understanding or predicting reality.

The reality is that bacteria under stress increase the mutation rate via expression of error prone DNA polymerase in order to increase the amount of genetic variation in the population that will be subject to natural selection.

Like a safe cracker trying every combination - if given enough chances it will eventually arrive at one that ‘works’.

Thus a ‘normal’ bacteria can change to a heat resistant bacteria, then be changed to a cold resistant bacteria then back to one that is ‘normal’. It didn't lose information - the DNA information is capable of changing via mutation to make proteins that are resistant to heat, then change again to make proteins that are resistant to cold, then change again to work optimally at ‘normal’ temperatures.

Thus your idea that information is somehow lost - and can only be lost - is wrong - will continue to be wrong - is useless - and obviously you have no desire to understand the reality behind what is actually happening.