Two potential creation scenarios

[agnosticatheist]

Let's assume for the sake of this debate that the following premises are true:

A: The Christian God exists

B: The Christian God created the universe

Now, let's consider two possible creation scenarios.

Scenario 1: God created each species in a separate creation event.

Scenario 1 questions for debate:

1. Why would God create each species in separate creation events and yet make it appear that each species emerged from earlier lifeforms? Wouldn't that make God dishonest?

2. The Bible says that God is trustworthy; can he still be trusted if he made it look like large-scale evolution has taken place when in fact it hasn't?

3. Why would God make it look like large-scale evolution has taken place when in fact it hasn't, knowing full well that this will cause many to doubt God's existence?

Scenario 2: God created the conditions in which carbon-based lifeforms could emerge and evolve on Earth, and eventually lead to the emergence of Homo Sapiens, which God would give a soul to (and perhaps make some other minor changes to), which would result in the creation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or Modern Humans.

Scenario B Question for debate:

1. Why would God go to all that trouble when he could simply create each species in separate creation events?

Here's a broader set of questions that apply to both scenarios:

Why would God create lifeforms other than humans? Clearly humans are important because they "house" the human soul. But what about Wolves? Crocodiles? Crows? Gorillas?

What is the role of non-human lifeforms in God's "plan"?

Do they have souls too? Consciousness/awareness is a state that people claim is possible due to the soul.

Well, the more we observe and study the non-human natural world, the more it seems that consciousness/awareness exists on a spectrum, from human-level awareness (or perhaps higher...), down to complete non-consciousness/non-awareness (e.g. bacteria). There isn't some absolute line where life is divided between conscious and non-conscious, except for maybe at the "lower lifeform levels", but definitely not at the "higher lifeform levels". Dogs are conscious, they just aren't conscious to the same degree that humans are.

So, why create lifeforms besides humans and have consciousness exist on a spectrum?

Why would God do this knowing full well that it would cause people to question his existence?

It just seems to be such an interesting coincidence that God created lifeform consciousness on a spectrum.

[rookiebatman]

Frankly, I'm pretty tired of going over the same ground with people who will not even admit what it is they believe.

Why would we admit to something that is not, in fact, what we actually believe? I "admit" that I find the evidence for evolution compelling. I see no shame in that or reason to hide it. But you're not gonna guilt me into admitting a position that I don't actually hold, no matter how many times you repeat it.

I have stated your position at least a dozen times. Probably many more. I've lost track.

And for every one of of those times that you've stated it accurately, you've used terms like "microbes morphing into men" to describe it inaccurately at least twice.

It is unwieldy to make the same paragraph-long qualification each time I wish to refer to the theory that states that microbes formed by random processes (yada yada) and eventually, through a long series of random processes (yada yada) turned into men.

This is another straw man. In the post which I linked to in my last post, I specifically gave you a perfectly reasonable description of evolution ("prehistoric microbes were the ancestors of modern man"). That's exactly eight word long; not even a sentence, never mind a paragraph. And let me repeat the previous sentiment that I suspect you won't much care for this description, because it doesn't make evolution sound ridiculous enough.

Again, I'm sorry that the term upsets you. But just as I'm not going to write a chapter of specific details in order to expand on the story of a man who made a success of himself from humble beginnings, but rather will merely refer to his "rags to riches" tale;

If you were sincerely sorry, why wouldn't you stop doing it before, when I gave you an eight-word-long description of evolution that's much more accurate to what evolutionists actually believe?

I will condense the atheopatic myth to the more facile "microbes to men"; or even better, m2m.

I don't have nearly as much problem with this as the uses of the words "morphed" or "became" (you'll notice that I never brought it up when you only used that term), and yet I still can't help but wonder, why can't you just say "evolution?"

Re: the term "atheopath," I can't find a definition of this anywhere. Is this something that anti-evolutionists just made up so they could sound smart?

I suggest you learn to live with it, and perhaps find things more suitable for earning the getting up of your dander;

If I repeatedly described Christianity as "zombie worship" or Communion as "cannibalism," or even something more ludicrous like saying the creationist viewpoint is that God farted the world into existence (which is no less accurate to what creationists believe than what you're claiming about evolutionists) might that not get your dander up eventually? See, someone willfully misrepresenting your beliefs to make them sound ridiculous is not amusing.

like the fact that our children are taught this absurd myth in schools (the morphing of microbes into men) unchallenged by the truth of (at least) ID (which is "Intelligent Design". Any problems with that abbreviation?)

Now there's an interesting point, that you prefer the term Intelligent Design or ID over creationism. Why is that? Is it perhaps that creationism sounds less like science and more like religion, so you don't want people to get the subconscious impression that your position is not scientific?

Might it be possible that hydrocarbons combined to form amino acids... blah, blah, blah...

Yes, it did happen on this planet. We know it was possible because it was duplicated in the lab.

[FarWanderer]

I will condense the atheopatic myth to the more facile "microbes to men"; or even better, m2m.

I don't have nearly as much problem with this as the uses of the words "morphed" or "became" (you'll notice that I never brought it up when you only used that term), and yet I still can't help but wonder, why can't you just say "evolution?"

If I may,

that's because he actually believes in evolution. He just doesn't believe in "microbes to men" evolution.

[rookiebatman]

I will condense the atheopatic myth to the more facile "microbes to men"; or even better, m2m.

I don't have nearly as much problem with this as the uses of the words "morphed" or "became" (you'll notice that I never brought it up when you only used that term), and yet I still can't help but wonder, why can't you just say "evolution?"

If I may,

that's because he actually believes in evolution. He just doesn't believe in "microbes to men" evolution.

I don't think I follow. Do you mean like microevolution, are is there some other evolutionary theory I'm not aware of?

[FarWanderer]

I will condense the atheopatic myth to the more facile "microbes to men"; or even better, m2m.

I don't have nearly as much problem with this as the uses of the words "morphed" or "became" (you'll notice that I never brought it up when you only used that term), and yet I still can't help but wonder, why can't you just say "evolution?"

If I may,

that's because he actually believes in evolution. He just doesn't believe in "microbes to men" evolution.

I don't think I follow. Do you mean like microevolution, are is there some other evolutionary theory I'm not aware of?

Just a few posts ago, post 237, he said to you:

all YECs believe in "changes in an allele". And they accurately predicted rapid speciation based on that principle, before it was conceded to have occurred by m2m-ers.

They are MORE "evolutionary" in that regard than m2m-ers.

So, apparently he believes in speciation.

[rookiebatman]

[Replying to post 243 by FarWanderer]

But nonetheless, what he is referring to as "m2m" is what is commonly known as "the theory of evolution," and "m2m-ers" are commonly known as "evolutionists." It doesn't really matter whether other people believe in certain types of little things that could be called evolution, when you say "evolution" in the context of a debate like this, everybody knows what you mean. Therefore, I submit that the only reason to use a different term is as a rhetorical tactic to reframe an opponent's position into something that is more ridiculous and easily disputable than the position actually is in reality (like the way my Dad calls evolutionists "Darwinists," as if we're a religion that worships Darwin; also completely untrue).

[Danmark]

I will condense the atheopatic myth to the more facile "microbes to men"; or even better, m2m.

I don't have nearly as much problem with this as the uses of the words "morphed" or "became" (you'll notice that I never brought it up when you only used that term), and yet I still can't help but wonder, why can't you just say "evolution?"

If I may,

that's because he actually believes in evolution. He just doesn't believe in "microbes to men" evolution.

Not believing that we had a common ancestor = disbelief in evolution. There are a variety of these 'types.' I see them somewhere along a continuum that starts with "God created everything just the way it is today because God is perfect and makes no mistakes." [never mind that 99% of species have gone extinct]

Then they have to be brought to the trough of knowledge as if by the ears and have their faces rubbed in facts. A few of those facts stick. They reluctantly agree that artificial selection has been practiced by man, so somehow dogs and cattle have been bred and plants cultivated. Then someone shows a slight species change within man's lifetime and their favorite teacher or blog confesses that sometimes there actually is an example of "microevolution," but for some reason their minds go completely blank when asked to stretch their time horizon beyond a few hundred years.

The resulting reluctant concession to a few pesky facts does not equal belief in evolution.

What really bunches my shorts, however, is when they play the "science card" inconsistently. They believe in science of course, when it suits their purposes; but when the scientific facts become too inconvenient, suddenly it is "scientism" and scientists use the wrong "epistemology." Apparently scientists are allowed to look thru magnifying glasses, but when it comes to powerful microscopes, divine revelation is a more accurate tool of discovery.

All of this is painfully obvious and should lead a reasonable person to refuse to engage in discussions about how many fairies can dance on rose petal, but a few slow learners like myself cannot lay off the bait.

[rookiebatman]

Then they have to be brought to the trough of knowledge as if by the ears and have their faces rubbed in facts. A few of those facts stick. They reluctantly agree that artificial selection has been practiced by man, so somehow dogs and cattle have been bred and plants cultivated. Then someone shows a slight species change within man's lifetime and their favorite teacher or blog confesses that sometimes there actually is an example of "microevolution," but for some reason their minds go completely blank when asked to stretch their time horizon beyond a few hundred years.

For me the big question, to people who accept microevolution (obviously) but claim that macroevolution is absurd, is this; what element or force is placing the limit on microevolution continuing to the point where it would be considered macroevolution? We all seem to agree that there was once a single type of canine, and now there are Great Danes and Chihuahuas (which are even less similar to each other than apes and men). If you plotted the trajectory of change on a graph (i.e. Great Danes getting bigger than the first canine and Chihuahuas getting smaller), and then continued that trajectory for the millions or billions are years that evolutionists believe the process of evolution took, then wouldn't the result of that much change (call it "future hound") be just as different from the first dog as a chicken is from a T-rex? If someone kept breeding a Chihuahua until it was the size of an insect, could you really just call that another type of dog? I shouldn't think so; that would be a clear example of evolution moving beyond the bounds of created "kinds" (just like walking fish already are).

So my question is, if macroevolution is not possible, then what's stopping it? The only reason Great Danes aren't getting any bigger is because dogs are domestic animals, so it's not suitable to survival in their environment to get any bigger. But if they were in an environment where getting bigger was more suitable to survival, do you really think that could never happen (even after millions of years), and if not, what would be the specific force or element preventing it?

[Danmark]

Then they have to be brought to the trough of knowledge as if by the ears and have their faces rubbed in facts. A few of those facts stick. They reluctantly agree that artificial selection has been practiced by man, so somehow dogs and cattle have been bred and plants cultivated. Then someone shows a slight species change within man's lifetime and their favorite teacher or blog confesses that sometimes there actually is an example of "microevolution," but for some reason their minds go completely blank when asked to stretch their time horizon beyond a few hundred years.

For me the big question, to people who accept microevolution (obviously) but claim that macroevolution is absurd, is this; what element or force is placing the limit on microevolution continuing to the point where it would be considered macroevolution? We all seem to agree that there was once a single type of canine, and now there are Great Danes and Chihuahuas (which are even less similar to each other than apes and men). If you plotted the trajectory of change on a graph (i.e. Great Danes getting bigger than the first canine and Chihuahuas getting smaller), and then continued that trajectory for the millions or billions are years that evolutionists believe the process of evolution took, then wouldn't the result of that much change (call it "future hound") be just as different from the first dog as a chicken is from a T-rex? If someone kept breeding a Chihuahua until it was the size of an insect, could you really just call that another type of dog? I shouldn't think so; that would be a clear example of evolution moving beyond the bounds of created "kinds" (just like walking fish already are).

So my question is, if macroevolution is not possible, then what's stopping it? The only reason Great Danes aren't getting any bigger is because dogs are domestic animals, so it's not suitable to survival in their environment to get any bigger. But if they were in an environment where getting bigger was more suitable to survival, do you really think that could never happen (even after millions of years), and if not, what would be the specific force or element preventing it?

The Great Danes and Chihuahuas comparison is not apt. They belong to the same species, just as Nordic giants and pygmies do.

Some of this is explained in a Scientific American article on 15 of the most common false beliefs about evolution. Here are the two most on point:

1. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

'Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.'
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... eationist/

[rookiebatman]

The Great Danes and Chihuahuas comparison is not apt. They belong to the same species, just as Nordic giants and pygmies do.

I'm not saying they aren't. I'm saying if they continued to change with the same trajectory as they already have, but over the course of millions of years, wouldn't they become different species at some point? And if not, what would be the immutable barrier stopping them?

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.'
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... eationist/

Of course, what a creationist would say is, "well, they may not breed with each other, but they're still just flies." And really, you could say the same about Great Danes and Chihuahuas; could they ever breed with each other? I doubt it, but they're still just dogs. The point I'm making is that if you take that rate of change that's been shown to happen (which nobody's disputing as far as I know) within dogs or flies, and extrapolate that change to continue over millions or billions of years (like we believe evolution already has), would you expect that the result of that continued change would still just be dogs/flies, or an entirely new species?

[Danmark]

If someone were serious about disputing macroevolution, they might start here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
. . . read the article carefully, demonstrate they at least understand what it says; then pick a single section and attempt to offer cogent evidence and argument for what they think is error. Then a productive debate could take place.

Instead we see catch phrases, sarcasm, and demonstrations of a failure to even understand the theory and evidence it is based upon; in essence, arguments from ignorance.

There are sites that claim to offer rebuttals, but they play with the facts, make outright dishonest claims and do not get into the necessary detail to support their arguments. In the interest of showing both sides, here's an article from one the claims to rebut the article I mention:
http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1b.asp