Sadly, an Honest Creationist

SecularHumanism.org ^ | Richard Dawkins

[WRhine]

You are seriously mistaken if you actually think that all opposition to evolution orthodoxy comes from book-burning Bible thumpers. Of course, it is very convenient for you to believe that so that you can push all opposing thought into a neat little nutshell, label it and discredit it as neanderthal, unscientific nonsense.

Nothing is neater or more unscientific to believe the bible passage that says the earth was literally created by god in 6 days. Hey! Then that is all you have to know! You can then close your mind to anything else that says otherwise. How easy. Oh and yes, you bible thumpers do account for almost all the opposition against evolution (science). Most of the "established" Christian faiths have an open mind about evolution.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

Great summary of some of the improbabilities with evolution. Do you mind if I "pile on"?

I like to maintain an open mind on evolution. Here's the problems it has that it must solve to convince me:

1. There is no known method by which life comes from non-life. People can't produce life by trying in a laboratory. The known conditions of the earth at the time of the first appearance of life are not conducive to the creation of life. (I'm an old earth/universe creationist, BTW)
2. There is no known method to produce the genetic drift or mutations at the rate required to produce new families of animals/plants/etc. Chemical and radiological means produce inferior mutations, as shown by countless generations of fruit flies. No new family of animals has arisen in 65 million years.
3. There is not enought time in the fossil record for the genetic drift to have occured that is necessary.
4. We cannot produce evolution in laboratories using short lived species under stress. Why should it happen in nature?
5. The fossil record shows the sudden appearance of new families and species, which is consistent with creation, but not with evolution.

In summary, there is no method to start life, no means to make beneficial mutations, no evidence it happened, and no laboratory experiments to show it can happen.

I personally believe speciation is "built in" capability of the "kinds" mentioned in Genesis 1. This accounts for the genetic variation we have observed in nature and through human breeding programs. But although we have Great Danes and Mexican Hairless from wolves, they're still dogs.

I think early earth creationists biggest failing is their lack of understanding of the Bible. Genesis 1 is a poem or a song format, very beautifully and succienctly written. It speaks of the six days of creation, but leaves out many details. Verses 1 and 2 are ambiguous about the time between the creation of the earth and the time of the earth being without form and void. I feel verses 2 onward speak of the recreation of the earth after a disaster, rather than the original creation.

The idea of a "mental virus" is also called a "meme"-- a contagious idea. One such is the idea of a creation without a Creator. A universe that came from nothing. Laws without a law giver. It's very popular with those who do not want to believe in a Supreme Being, and has been around since the time of the Greeks (2600 years) and before.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Peer review is a long-standing joke.......

Did you get a paper rejected? Why? What reason did the referee give? Peer reviewers want to know.

[Doctor Stochastic]

This means that it is impossible for there to ever be a new model,...

False. Many new ideas come along. The ideas do have to be consistent with evidence and with themselves. I have had new (and controversial) ideas published at times. Often though, people whose papers are rejected yell conspiracy. I've rejected papers for incorrect math but not for controversy. I've even approved papers which had results that I didn't like; but the papers were right.

[WRhine]

So, chill with the "I hate redneck" talk or I will think you are a fool

LOL. On almost any other subject it is usually me that gets stuck with the redneck label. Weird. I didn't think this had anything to do with politics.

[gusopol3]

I am also a Christian... Creationists are left to old testament folklore that was handed down from one generation to the next verbally thousands of years before recorded history.

"For we have seen His star in the east and have come to worship Him."

[garbanzo]

Actually - in very recently published research - people have found that some organic molecules very close to the sugars found in DNA exist in meteorites and it's been known for a while that organic molecules are found in space especially in meteor fragments. We're probably leaning somewhat closer to finder at least some of the raw materials being seeded from space.

From the AP Sugar Compounds Found in Meteorites

Sugar compounds, an indispensable ingredient for life today, have been found in meteorites, bolstering the theory that chunks of rock from outer space delivered the materials that gave rise to life in Earth. Another key ingredient, amino acids, has already been found in meteorites. George Cooper of NASA (news - web sites)'s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., said that while it has not been proved that meteorites delivered the materials that led to life, the discovery means meteorites containing the building blocks were at least present on the planet early in its history

[Billy_bob_bob]

Your arguments are well put, thank you for being coherent and polite with your contribution to this thread. Would you be so kind as to read my earlier post #34? I believe that evolution is real, and explains some things, but I also agree with you in that evolution does not explain everything.

Stephen Wolfram is proposing some very interesting new ideas that you might want to read about, you can go to www.stephenwolfram.com to read up on it. It's late, but I'll check back tomorrow to see if you had a chance to look this up.

[Billy_bob_bob]

I've seen that, but it still begs the question where the "seed" originated from. I'm reminded of the old legends that said that the world rests on the back of a giant turtle. When asked what the turtle is standing on, the answer is another turtle, and eventually the answer is given that "it's turtles all the way down". Harumph. Still, this info is very interesting and may in fact lead to a greater understanding of how life on Earth originated.

And now I'm off to bed, it's late and I'm tired.

[garbanzo]

Well apparently space is capable of sustaining the chemical reactions needed to create amino acids and sugars. It is surprising but it does seems as if space isn't as chemically inert as it used to be thought. After all, we have vast clouds of hydrogen filling space - along with at some point ammonnia gas clouds, water and carbon - that there gets us the raw materials for most organic compounds.

Throw in sulfur and phosphorus on some suitable planet and you've got most of your organic chemistry set right there.

[RadioAstronomer]

Do you agree with RadioAstronomer that any concept of Intelligent Design is a "crackpot" idea?

I think the term crackpot is probably too harsh and I spoke in haste. I should have said; There is little or no evidence for ID as a viable explanation for the data that has been gathered to date.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Do you agree with RadioAstronomer that any concept of Intelligent Design is a "crackpot" idea?

That's not what RA said. You should really try not to misquote so as not to be mistaken for a journalist.

Anyway, what I agree or disagree with isn't the point. The ID guys have to prove their point. So far, they haven't done so.

[garbanzo]

I'm only pointing out that research would seem to indicate that most of the ingredients were here at the right time and many of the objections seem to have some reasonable, if not completely proven, answers. For example if the required sugar groups came from space, then questions about the origins of the sugar groups on earth become moot. Of course it asks new questions about extraterrestrial chemistry - but these actually seem to be easier questions than their terrestrial counterparts since we actually got them in our hands and we know that some chemical process must have made them as opposed to speculation about what prehistorical chemical pathway on earth produced them and when.

In other words - it opens the question up to experiment and analysis.

[garbanzo]

However as we learn in chemistry class - atoms and molecules react with other in highly specified ways so the analogy isn't apt. In fact, this raises some interesting questions (for me at least, professional chemists might find it old hat) - that given some elements in some fraction to each other, what's the probability that a given reaction will occur.

The reason why it's interesting is that it's analogous to a problem in quantum field theory about how particles interact with each other.