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.

[Danmark]

Now I understand this forum has rules; and you have challenged me to comply with them in terms of providing evidence to back up my claims, based on my beliefs.
....
I therefore present the following evidences for a "young earth".

Biological evidence for a young age of the earth

Image: Dr Mary Schweitzer

The finding of pliable blood vessels, blood cells and proteins in dinosaur bone is consistent with an age of thousands of years for the fossils, not the 65+ million years claimed by the paleontologists.
DNA in ‘ancient’ fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years.

This is a gross misrepresentation of Dr. Schweitzer's work and opinions. Because of the length of your quote and the fact you do not give a proper cite, nor indicate who is quoting whom, it is difficult to find out exactly who you are quoting and the website you lifted this from.

She is an evangelical Christian; however, like most Christians who are also scientists, Dr. Mary Schweitzer does not believe in a 'young earth.' She specifically believes there are 'tons' of scientific evidence the Earth is billions of years old.

"If you believe 24/7 creation is really the only interpretation possible and ignore tons of evidence that the earth is billions of years old and that life was a simple construct that got way more complex over time, that’s fine—we may be wrong about the science (I don’t think we are, but as a scientist I have to leave that minute possibility open)." __ Dr. Mary Schweitzer, quoted at:
http://biologos.org/blog/not-so-dry-bon ... schweitzer

This is very typical of YEC creationist websites. The findings of science contradict their claims, so they take legitimate scientists and completely misrepresent them. In this case, Dr. Schweitzer's conclusion that the Earth is billions of years old was represented to be the opposite of what she actually says.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 39:

Joey -- I can tell you're a good guy. You and I would enjoy having a beer or three together. I betcha I'd have you questioning what you've been taught all your life by the end of the third one. Maybe the 5th?

Or maybe I could get you to questioning

Who decides what "really matters"?

Am I bound to think that nothing in my life matters unless a Christian thinks it should?

The creator who formed our limited, "bounded" (it has a beginning, so it cannot be infinite in age or size) space-time continuum, out of His infinite imagination and power, is the one who decides "what really matters".

Why should I be bound by his concerns?

You've got an uphill battle trying to say that what I think matters is somehow invalid.

Where have you shown this entity has "infinite" imagination.

Or better yet, where've you shown this entity even has an imagination?

He -- not "Christians" -- has given us the free will to choose whether we will agree with Him in that regard, and conform to His purpose. And that is the basis of the whole story of our human history -- which is actually "His-story".

God is Michael Jackson?

You make a lot of claims, but I don't really see any support for 'em.

Yeah, but Joey -- first of all, the chemicals are designed to do that (combine)

I reckon we could say that stuff that acts according to its properties is "designed" to do so. My issue with using such a term is that it's so often presented by folks who claim there's this "designer", but who're incapable of showing this designer to exist.

second of all, the difference between chemicals combining, and the processes required to manufacture the simplest living organism, cannot be adequately conveyed by comparing Edison's first phonograph to a blue-ray disc.

I never made such, nor have I ever heard such a comparison, except from you.

We note that chemicals combine to create new chemicals, and can extrapolate from that fact that an organism that is composed of chemicals might well come from such combinations of chemicals.

Sure, amino acids are designed to combine into proteins. Sure, proteins are designed to combine into a code for living organisms (DNA).

Where have you shown they were designed to do this?

But the specificity involved so far outweighs any remote possibility of life arising from random processes, that it alone is knock-down evidence that life didn't occur that way - but by deliberate, detailed DESIGN.

Please present your calculations for analysis.

Lacking such, all I see is incredulity.

We must remember that the possibility of something coming into existence, when there it is a-doin' it, is 1, or 100%, 'pending on how we wanna consider the math.

Add to that the chicken-egg conundrum: you need DNA to build a cell; you need a cell (with its structures and mechanisms) to build the DNA molecule...

This doesn't factor in prior forms that may have existed, where we know that chemicals combine to create new chemicals (structures).

What we see is that change in genetic structure is occurring, and can extrapolate from that fact that evolution occurs.

Looked at rationally, reasonably -- it's God, or nothing.

How is that reasonable?

There is empirical proof of SOMETHING: ergo -- it's God.

I missed something here - your emperical proof.

Please enlighten me.

[Zzyzx]

.
[Replying to post 39 by Volbrigade]

Other moderators will deal with the rule infractions so I respond to statements / claims.

What we are dealing with, in terms of origins and history, which are not subject to scientific observation, but only inference, is two religious worldviews: the agnostic/atheistic, and the theistic. The former leads to incoherency and absurdity.

The latter STARTS with incoherency and absurdity – proclaiming without evidence (other than testimoinals, opinion and conjecture) that invisible, undetectable, supernatural entities originated the universe and its contents.

Look -- I come here, or any other forum, for my own amusement, and to express what I believe to be true.

The only honorable reason to come to this Forum is to DEBATE issues, not express their opinions or beliefs, not to preach or proselytize. Those who read and abide by Forum Rules understand this. Those who are uncomfortable with having their ideas challenged and being asked for supporting evidence do not fare well in debate here.

Now I understand this forum has rules; and you have challenged me to comply with them in terms of providing evidence to back up my claims, based on my beliefs.

The Moderating Team is observing carefully your behavior – as is true for all who are repeatedly reported for rule infractions.

Now my claim is that microbes2men is an impossibility; and the interpretation of evidence to support that impossiblity -- though popular and prevalent -- constitutes a hoax.

You are expected, therefore, to SUBSTANTIATE that claim – far more than just your opinion.

I maintain, in asserting that claim, that for m2m to have any remote plausibility, then the universe and earth would have to be billions of years old, in order for microbes to morph into men, and geologic and fossil formations to take place, by uniformitartian, "slow and gradual" processes.

The age of the Earth is calculated to be 4.5 billion years – by people who actually study such things. Of course, those who do not study such things often feel qualified to express unverifiable opinions to the contrary and feel qualified to dispute serious study based upon nothing more than tales by ancient, unidentifiable people (plus unverifiable testimonials).

And that furthermore: if the universe and earth can be shown to be far younger than is claimed by the proponents of m2m evoution -- thousands, instead of billions, of years old -- then m2m is utterly falsified and defeated.

IF the Earth could be proved to be only a few thousand years old, in spite of all evidence that it is much older, then you would have a point.

I therefore present the following evidences for a "young earth".

"Evidence" presented is a personal opinion by an individual.

Kindly present credible evidence from peer-reviewed literature.

[Volbrigade]

Joey --

your objections are a little on the basic side. Essentially, they can be distilled to "where's your empirical proof of God?"

Which is a firm crutch to lean your skepticism or unbelief on, sure.

But nothing to hang your hat on.

Obviously, a Being from outside our space-time dimensionality could not be perceived from within it (the old "Flatland" metaphor -- still the best, in terms of exposition. Surely you're familiar with it?).

The question then is: has it (He) revealed itself to us in a way we could perceive and comprehend? That is a question that is manifestly, definitionally beyond the bounds of "empirical proof".

I, of course, maintain that He has: through His creation (and its design and order); through His inspired Scripture (an integrated message system form outside our time domain, authenticated by its pre-writing of history in advance, as well as numerous other authentications); and by His manifesting as a person in the space-time domain He created -- Jesus Christ, who verified His identity by rising from the dead, into a hyperdimensional, "spiritual", eternal mode of existence, so that we may into into it.

You disagree.

That's not my problem.

Goat:

Over 100 evidences, and you apparently couldn't get past the first one.

You only have 99-plus to go.

That you don't like the facts presented by creationists; or that poor Dr. Schweitzer is clinging to long-age beliefs, despite the evidence that she herself discovered that helps overturn them --

is, again, not my problem.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 42 by Zzyzx]

"Evidence" presented is a personal opinion by an individual.

That, sir, is a statement of 100%, pure, unadulterated bovine scatology.

If a moderator may make such claims, and then determine whether the response to them is within the boundaries of the interpretation of some arbitrary and arcane "rules" -- all the while smugly insinuating that the poster is under scrutiny from a self-appointed conclave of grand poo-bahs (as if that would be the cause of the slightest bit of concern, other than a humorous one) --

then I leave you to your self-important DragonCon of a site.

By the way -- I know you will revoke both posting privileges, and delete this post; which will be both a source of bemused entertainment for me; bragging rites; and a source of anecdotes: "here's the site that got so frustrated with me, for knocking down the spires of their cloud castle faith system. And when they repeatedly demanded evidence for my claims, I gave them so much that they blatantly mischaracterized it as "opinion"; and banned me when I called them out for lying about it."

Good stuff.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 42 by Zzyzx]

"Evidence" presented is a personal opinion by an individual.

That, sir, is a statement of 100%, pure, unadulterated bovine scatology.

If a moderator may make such claims, and then determine whether the response to them is within the boundaries of the interpretation of some arbitrary and arcane "rules" -- all the while smugly insinuating that the poster is under scrutiny from a self-appointed conclave of grand poo-bahs (as if that would be the cause of the slightest bit of concern, other than a humorous one) --

then I leave you to your self-important DragonCon of a site.

By the way -- I know you will revoke both posting privileges, and delete this post; which will be both a source of bemused entertainment for me; bragging rites; and a source of anecdotes: "here's the site that got so frustrated with me, for knocking down the spires of their cloud castle faith system. And when they repeatedly demanded evidence for my claims, I gave them so much that they blatantly mischaracterized it as "opinion"; and banned me when I called them out for lying about it."

Good stuff.

Please try to abide by the rules that you agreed to while signing on. I personally would like to see some evidence for your claims, assuming there is any of course.

I'm not sure why you are getting such a kick out of your behavior here, but it would be nice if you started to debate. It's reminds me of someone getting kicked off a bus, while all the while being proud of the behavior that got them kicked off said bus. Not being able to follow the rules is not something a person should be proud of IMO. Perhaps the science section is not the best place for you to start?

If you decide to post in this sub forum, would you mind answering a question that has been posed to you twice already? Not sure if you missed it both times or not, but I feel it deserves and answer.

How do you explain the fact that evolution is so easily disproved, just by finding one animal out of place in the fossil record, yet such a thing has never happened. This would be where you state your claim and then provide us with evidence to examine. I suppose you could attack the site, the mods and the members instead though, but that would continue to accomplish nothing.

[Danmark]

Radiometric dating and the age of the earth

Carbon-14 in coal suggests ages of thousands of years and clearly contradict ages of millions of years.
Carbon-14 in oil again suggests ages of thousands, not millions, of years.
Carbon-14 in fossil wood also indicates ages of thousands, not millions, of years.
Carbon-14 in diamonds suggests ages of thousands, not billions, of years.

More nonsense. This analogy is not perfect, but it comes to mind:
Using Carbon 14 dating to measure objects millions of years old is like timing hair growth with a stopwatch.

Radiocarbon dating doesn't work well on objects much older than twenty thousand years, because such objects have so little C-14 left that their beta radiation is swamped out by the background radiation of cosmic rays and potassium-40 (K-40) decay. Younger objects can easily be dated, because they still emit plenty of beta radiation, enough to be measured after the background radiation has been subtracted out of the total beta radiation. However, in either case, the background beta radiation has to be compensated for, and, in the older objects, the amount of C-14 they have left is less than the margin of error in measuring background radiation. As Hurley points out:

Without rather special developmental work, it is not generally practicable to measure ages in excess of about twenty thousand years, because the radioactivity of the carbon becomes so slight that it is difficult to get an accurate measurement above background radiation.

http://ncse.com/cej/3/2/answers-to-crea ... -14-dating

The limit of carbon dating is about 60,000 years, so it is foolish to attempt to measure the age of rocks beyond this period using this method.

An organism acquires carbon during its lifetime. Plants acquire it through photosynthesis, and animals acquire it from consumption of plants and other animals. When an organism dies, it ceases to take in new carbon-14, and the existing isotope decays with a characteristic half-life (5730 years). The proportion of carbon-14 left when the remains of the organism are examined provides an indication of the time elapsed since its death. The carbon-14 dating limit lies around 58,000 to 62,000 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

Coal is 300-360 million years old, so it makes no sense to use Carbon 14 dating to determine the age of coal.
"The Carboniferous Period lasted from about 359.2 to 299 million years ago during the late Paleozoic Era. The term "Carboniferous" comes from England, in reference to the rich deposits of coal that occur there. These deposits of coal occur throughout northern Europe, Asia, and midwestern and eastern North America."
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/carbonifer ... ferous.php

This another example of the attempt by creationist websites to misrepresent the facts by applying the wrong methods. Twisting the methods of science and their findings this way results in pseudo science and is one of the reasons the courts have rejected 'intelligent design'/creationism in public classrooms. It simply is not science, but the promotion of religion.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 43:

your objections are a little on the basic side. Essentially, they can be distilled to "where's your empirical proof of God?"

Which is a firm crutch to lean your skepticism or unbelief on, sure.

But nothing to hang your hat on.

Noted.

Obviously, a Being from outside our space-time dimensionality could not be perceived from within it (the old "Flatland" metaphor -- still the best, in terms of exposition. Surely you're familiar with it?).

Familiar enough.

The question then is: has it (He) revealed itself to us in a way we could perceive and comprehend? That is a question that is manifestly, definitionally beyond the bounds of "empirical proof".

I, of course, maintain that He has: through His creation (and its design and order); through His inspired Scripture (an integrated message system form outside our time domain, authenticated by its pre-writing of history in advance, as well as numerous other authentications); and by His manifesting as a person in the space-time domain He created -- Jesus Christ, who verified His identity by rising from the dead, into a hyperdimensional, "spiritual", eternal mode of existence, so that we may into into it.

You disagree.

That's not my problem.

Nor does it seem your problem to actually address specific challenges I've presented. I had hoped you could do better'n just preach.

I trust the observer will reach a similar conclusion.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to Volbrigade]
A problem with science, that you don't have with religion is the need to stay current.

Here you go, update your BS:

The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. According to new research, iron in the dinosaur's body preserved the tissue before it could decay.

The research, headed by Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University, explains how proteins — and possibly even DNA — can survive millennia. Schweitzer and her colleagues first raised this question in 2005, when they found the seemingly impossible: soft tissue preserved inside the leg of an adolescent T. rex unearthed in Montana.

"What we found was unusual, because it was still soft and still transparent and still flexible," Schweitzer told LiveScience

And here's one that even a Middle School science student would know is wrong:

Volbrigade said (in error):

"Carbon-14 in coal suggests ages of thousands of years and clearly contradict ages of millions of years.
Carbon-14 in oil again suggests ages of thousands, not millions, of years.
Carbon-14 in fossil wood also indicates ages of thousands, not millions, of years.
Carbon-14 in diamonds suggests ages of thousands, not billions, of years. Note that attempts to explain away carbon-14 in diamonds, coal, etc., such as by neutrons from uranium decay converting nitrogen to C-14 do not work."

Carbon-14 can not be used to date things in the millions of years range. The practical upper limit is nine half lives or between 20,000 and 50,000 years. For longer time frames you must use material with a longer half life.

[Danmark]

...and arcane "rules"

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They are neither hidden nor mysterious. Your attempt to shift the focus from your ineffective and misleading efforts to attack evolution, and try to make this about your self inflicted martyrdom are noted. Whatever action is taken will be solely because of your insistence on violating the rules of the forum, and for no other reason.

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