Sir_Brizz said:
I was talking specifically about creationism vs. evolution....but whatever. Most atheist/scientists refuse to believe that creationism is even a possibility whan stacked against the "proof"s of evolution, such as it were.
Because there is no evidence for it scientifically, therefore from a scientific viewpoint it has no credibility and cannot be considered or even acknowledged as a possibility unless you want to list off endless examples. As I said, creationism is meaningless ultimately as far as science is concerned, because you can technically make up anything you want for an origin. Science isn't about making things up, and when scientists make up crap that isn't supported by evidence, they get exposed and completely discredited.
Haeckel, the 'science' of phrenology and eugenics for a few examples. Admitting things like creationism may be correct, based on no sound theories, evidence and the like is not science. You might as well start saying that phrenology may be right 'just because'.
They refuse to believe that both creationism and evolution are possibilities IN THE SAME REALM.
I DISAGREE.
Likewise, you can apply the same problems to evolution.
No you can't, evolution is a scientific theory backed by evidence, theories and is continually being revised, rewritten and challenged. Evolution is a theory that has been under attack since 1859 and has SURVIVED every attack. All modern science, archaeology and similar advances has done is FURTHER proved evolution and in fact has bought it very much into accepted fact. What evolutionary biology does today is answer the questions as to why animals developed, how evolution occurs and what triggers major evolutionary changes and the like.
Creationism, as an idea, has fell apart since the advent of modern science and when the church stopped burning people at the stake for heretical ideas (A german monk called Bruno comes to mind).
To most of the people that believe in creationism, there is significant indications that there was a creator.
Yep, you can make up all the evidence you want. It doesn't exist in any tangible scientifically verifiable form so it isn't 'evidence' it's what you 'believe'. There lies the difference.
For example, you can say the inherent complexity of the type III secretion system is 'intelligent design', I can point out that the immune system is the work of the invisible pink unicorn providing defences for me against your Gods type III secretion design. Ultimately we get nowhere because neither of us has actual evidence, and for all intents and purposes, what you claim was ID is probably found to have simpler precursors that it could have evolved out of. Ultimately, one position has evidence that can be tested, verified and experimented on. The other two are nothing more than someones personal belief and are not as valid.
To people that believe in evolution,
You instantly invalidate your argument by claiming 'belief' in evolution, which is utter trollop. There is no belief, there is direct evidence of it having occured in the past and still occuring.
there is significant indications that "luck" evolved the world.
Because that is, in the end, ultimately how life works. Do you think there is some form of higher intelligence directing the evolution of influenza viruses, which is just a glorified lottery (one that is very destructive mind)? Do you believe that God dictates who wins the lottery for that manner? Which numbers come out on a random function of a calculator? If your archer beats an attacking panzer in Civilisation III?
Neither party seems interested that any Supreme Being might have used the natural law of Evoluton to do the creating for him
Again, no evidence. None. Nadda. Zippo.
Again, if you can DEFINITIVELY prove YOUR deity did it, and not a giant invisible chicken, an invisible pink unicorn, a guy called Steve, aliens, dagoob from the planet oogityboogitydance, John Travoltas pants or any number of things, you are not practicing science and it doesn't deserve to be considered. Unless we acknowledge every possibility that doesn't have evidence either, then it's not a fair or correct position to just take one of many possible creation theories and say 'this could have happened instead, because you know, ummmm well, just because'.
As well, there is as much evidence that man descended from the Albatross as that he descended from any other species (other than theory/surmisation).
Look at an albatross skull, then a mammalian skull. Then look at the skulls of dinosaurs like archaeopteryx and cynodonts. Albatrosses are descended from a lineage of dinosaurs alled diapsids, which have two openings on the side of their skull. Mammals on the other hand, evolved from dinosaurs that appeared later in the cretaceous, and these are synapsids which only have one such hole.
From an evolutionary point of view this makes an incredible difference between the two organisms. Firstly, the mammalian jaw has evolved in an entirely different way from birds. To say that humans would have evolved from birds, is to defy logic and the evidence to the contrary.
The following sequence is the evolution of the mammalian jaw from mostly synapsid dinosaur ancestors (which themeselves evolved from anapsidsl) which ends somewhere around the first 'mammal-like' beasties. Here you can see the modification of the skull in the various ways in which it formed.
And unfortunately, I am unable to find the diapsid model of the above (I've seen it before, but it isn't online, usually takes them a while to catch up with journals).
However, even a quick glance can reveal that on a basic fundamental level, it is extremely unlikely that humans ever evolved from albatrosses vs. the original synapsid dinosaurs that appeared in the cretaceous. The skull structure is simply too different and looks utterly unalike to those of bird skulls, that it is more than likely mammals and birds took two entirely different evolutionary routes, that interject only after synapsids diverged from diapsids.
As a result your statement is incorrect and completely without basis. So lets learn some biology and then make not as absurd statements please. Even at the basic biological level, there is 'not just as much' evidence that humans evolved from albatrosses as anything else, because there is SO MUCH evidence to the contrary, before we even BEGIN DESCRIBING humans or albatrosses.
Please take your strawmans elsewhere.
How do you know God isn't a giant invisible chicken that lays eggs that people live on?
I mean, come on, you have to admit there is a point where you have to say "We just don't know".
Exactly, which makes it pointless to ascribe creationism as correct over aliens. In fact, if I had to make a guess, I would put my money on aliens first.
It takes just as much faith to believe in anything past that point, on either side of the fence, so arguing over whether one disproves itself or not is pretty frivolous.
Any creation myth that tries to disguise itself as a science automatically does. If it calls itself 'philosophy' then it is fine, because it distinguishes itself immediately from being a science. I'm sorry, if you want 'creationism' as regarded as equally as valid as a scientific origin such as evolution provides it has to play by the same rules. As sites like gibberingingenesis prove, they clearly can't and usually have to make things up or worse, lie to prove what is ultimately merely an agenda: And not legitimate science.
I could make many of the same arguments about evolution as you just did about creationism that would seem to make it "disprove itself".
Out of curiosity, how could you make an argument that evolution 'disproves' itself, when you don't even understand the biology behind it? This isn't philosophy where what you make up ultimately cannot be proven/disproven either way, you'd have to come up with actual hard evidence to demonstrate a scientific theory is 'disproven'. I understand creationism very well, I've made these sorts of pointless arguments my hobby since I first discovered people that tried to claim that insects were 'unliving' automatons to get around spiders being obligate carnivores before the flood*. I know exactly where creationism blatantly distorts simple facts, and in the last one of these we had (that thread by scorch that I derailed) I pointed several of these out numerous times.
You see, in simple terms, I say creationism disproves itself because it cannot inherently support it's own position for what it *attempts to do*. That attempt is to *scientifically* prove that a creator made the world. Yet it cannot do so, because there IS no testable scientific evidence to support that idea, sure again, you can CLAIM something to be so, but you cannot PROVE it by experimentation nor does the empiracle evidence say so. As such, creationism as I explained earlier, is self defeating as a competing 'scientific' theory. It fails the first tenant of science to begin with: Make a hypothesis and then disprove it. Creationism assumes the hypothesis is right, attempts to prove so, and discards/ignores anything to the contrary. As a result, those 'same' arguments don't apply because Evolution clearly is a science, because it meets this basis scientific tenant. Nobody in 1859 said Evolution was truth to begin with, it got attacked viciously by the scientific community at first (It was actually the geologists that accepted the theory first, mainstream naturalists/biologists ridiculed it like everyone else).
I have yet, in all my time of arguing about this topic, never encountered a creationist who had any decent grasp of biology at all.
To me, that says an amazing amount.
