Is Evolutionist Disparagement of Creationism Justified?

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Western civilization and science itself would never have happened without my religion's holy book as you so dismissively put it,

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Hmmm, I wonder if Galileo thought that while under house arrest for heresy?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-21-2005 06:56 PM

How can you possibly deny the reasonablness of Faiths Assertion?Why if it were not for Christianity, would there even be Paper for the Bible to be printed on, Algebra to do scientific calculations, geometry to design nearly everything or make even something as simple as a car or church, an alphabet to record things, Nuclear Energy, buttons ...

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No, actually I politely asked for you to specify exactly what your vague generalities mean so I can determine if your scenario is reasonable and consistent with the observed facts. As I pointed out already, the formation of any significant portion of the Earth's sedimentary layers and/or fossil record in one diluvial event is an unreasonable scenario that is inconsistent with the observed facts. I alrady gave some references; I'll be glad to provide more on request.I note you didn't address any of the substantive points in my post, especially the fact (and the evidence for that fact) that devout Christian creationist geologists started with exactly your suppositions ... and discarded them because they were untenable in the light of observed reality. Exactly what deductions from exactly what circumstantial evidence? Exactly what is likely to be overturned by the next investigator, and why? I suspect that your only evidence or "reasoning" for those claims is that you wish it to be so because you can't face the real evidence.

Expand, please. Exactly what do you mean by "19th century puffery"? What about it is "typical"? Did you detect any errors in his reasoning? Did he get any facts wrong? Do you disagree with his conclusions and, if so, why?But, most important of all, do you deny that he was a Christian geologist who concluded that no significant portion of the Earth's geology was formed by a global flood, and he did this long before "Origin of Species" was published? If you do deny this, on what basis do you deny it?

Jar,I think you forgot to put a smiley or box in the text of your message with "[sarcasm] [/sarcasm]", right?!

This immediately makes me think of the old "missing transitional fossils" creationist argument. Funny how creationist "evidence" is often what they see as an absence of evidence for something - as in, "where ever there seems to be a gap in evidence, insert God."Truthfully I am no geologist, and don't immediately understand what you mean by "missing layers." If I recall in another thread you were arguing that the existence of layers refuted old-earth geology. Erosion would have wiped them out.Which is it? The absence of layers? Or the presence of layers?If you really want to get into Flood-theory-fun, explain to NosyNed how all of the fossils were ordered geologically by the Flood... he's been waiting for someone to do that for some time now. It seems to me that you have evidence that you think is against a geological hypothesis (not the biological theory of evolution). How is this evidence against another theory evidence for your theory? Hopefully you realize that scientific theories aren't confirmed by refuting other theories. No, the analogy fails rather completely.I say this because of the simple fact that if the Theory of Evolution is refuted, science will move on (and so would have Darwin, if he were alive to witness it.)This is quite different from the creationist view that evidence-that-doesn't-fit-the-conclusion-must-be-wrong. As in: and: You don't seem to require any evidence, and seem to simply "know" that evidence you don't like is wrong - thus I'm not sure why you are trying to making evidence-based arguments.You seemed to get upset when someone else brought this up. You are obviously a very articulate person, so I assume you believe arguments that you make repeatedly.(Also, I hope you read and appreciate Schraf's message #105 in this thread, specifically the latter half. You seem to be disparaging science for being thorough, detail-oriented, logical, and well - scientific...)

Are you implying that those things and many, many other basic advances were NOT straight from the Bible and were discovered or developed by someone other than a Christian?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jar, are you being serious? Nearly all of the things you mentioned were invented by people of religions other than Christianity! The Egyptians used paper made from papyrus as early as 3000BC, and the Chinese had paper as well. Algebra traces its roots back to Islam, with Al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scientist and mathematician as its founder. Mathematics in general, however, has even earlier roots - without math, how could the pyramids of Egypt be constructed? The ancient Chinese also made significant advances in mathematics.Great advances in geometry were made by Euclid, a Greek mathematician, hundreds of years before Christ, and Euclidean geometry gets its name from him. The earliest known phoenetic alphabet was invented around 1800BC in Egypt.I guess we can give the credit for churches to Christians but quite a few religions construct a special area dedicated to worship as well.

Hi Faith. Take courage and hang in there, madear. It's in times like these that you produce some of your best. I've already submitted one of your classic posts in this thread to POM and would like to post another from message 95 which says soooo much in one statement to those who need it, but not sure it would be acceptable to post two for one poster from one thread.Faith's message 95 GEM Such as the enormous piles of layered sediments found all over the world? Such as the prodigious quantities of fossils demonstrating sudden massive death by burial or at least the burial of massive numbers of corpses that had died by drowning? Such as the many beds of dinosaurs and other creatures which demonstrate no normal way dinosaurs would die and be buried, in bunches like that, but certainly are consistent with their having been washed there by torrents of water? Such as the deep canyons at the bottom of the oceans perhaps, or the volcanoes which were released after the release of the "fountains of the deep" opened up channels to the molten areas of the earth?

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How would geologists recognize such evidence given the presuppositions they take with them on their exploratory treks?
GEM: I totally agree with the above and your responses to Percy in post 95. Good job and please don't go away. This's why you're so needed here.

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The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buzsaw

Schraf, melady, first it's Parasomnium and now it's you who's trying to tell the www that you're spokespeople for us all here on this board. Why do you people do this when it's not true?This message has been edited by buzsaw, 03-21-2005 08:38 PM

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The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buzsaw

Well, Christians invented Agriculture and coffee and fire and almost everything else.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

the things you mentioned earlier were a product of Christianity.

Now I see you are being sarcastic.

We have folk come here regularly and claim that Morality, Invention, Technology, most everything else is the result of Christianity and we wouldn't have jack-shit if it wan't for the Bible and Christianity.Well, as a Christian I am simply embarrassed when folk make such stupid assertions and then say in public that they are Christians. It reflects poorly on all Christians everywhere.There is no component of civilization, invention, intellegence, morality, law, creativity, enterprise or any other endevour that is the exclusive provenance of Christianity. All people, all religions, Atheists, Theists, Agnostics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Pagans, Infidels have contributed.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Not in the context of that discussion, no, since I have not been concerned to read it.You agree, I think, that creationism does not have a chance when discussion is based on empirical evidence. My reaction to the topic title of the this thread is accordingly an unambiguous "Yes". Creationism is unmitigated pseudoscientific codswallop, and I guess you are of about the same view.That does not mean I have to be rude to creationists, of course; and if people take offence at my evaluation of the content of a position, so be it.The question for someone who shares my evaluation is: how does one engage such a view? And more fundamentally; WHY does one engage such a view?One of your aims here is to have an engagement which actually includes creationists. If you impose on that a requirement that everybody behave entirely rationally and consistently with empirical evidence, then I think you have an inevitable conflict of aims.The statement of the relevant guideline in the rules is at present worded thus:

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2. Debate in good faith by addressing rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not merely keep repeating the same points without further elaboration.

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My thought is that you don't have to be strict about progress being by addition of strictly empirical evidence. The word "or" in the guideline allows that someone can simply "enlarge" the argument as they see fit. The main thing is to avoid mere repetition.We also need to allow that empirical evidence never formally proves anything, and so "I'm not persuaded" can be a permitted response. What is really needed, I suspect, is a mutual willingness to wind up a discussion when this point is reached.The aim, in my view, should not be to convince creationists. That is rarely possible, at least in the short term. The aim (IMO) is to have the two perspectives on the table, side by side, so that the content of the argument in favour of either side is elucidated and so that lurkers or readers or people dropping in can make some kind of informed comparison.I would like us to be more strict about mere noise posts from the evolutionist side that say effectively nothing more than "you're an idiot" or "you don't know what you are talking about" or just plain mockery and jokes at creationist expense.It would be good to have a guideline that explicitly notes people have very different views and that even if we think their arguments are worthless, they may evaluate things quite differently. Whether this is rational or not, getting angry about people failing to accept or understand an argument is a bad idea. This applies both ways.A comment such as "you don't know what you are talking about" is OK if backed up by some kind of additional explanation to show that the critic DOES know what THEY are talking about. Just making the assertion that creationism is codswallop, however, is a problem.I know I have done it above. My excuse is that in the context of this thread I am not responding to a creationist position, but setting out what seems to be a perspective you and I have in common and do not need to debate when thinking of forum guidelines.Cheers -- Sylas