Summations Only

Hi Dr, Was your car created from an absence of existence?I dare say it was created from existing material.Can you tell me the difference between non existence and existence?

Or we could just look it up in a dictionary and see that you are wrong.*looks up 'creationist' in a dictionary*
Yup, you are wrong.

If you'd care to start a thread, we have actual physicists here.

It was created. It is something. I am not a creationist.

The idea that the world was created in 7 days and a biblical flood and the tower of babel was assumed as fact by me as soon as I read about such things in the bible. I was 6 years old at the time. Every sermon I listened to from then on confirmed that belief. Every family member of mine believed it except my stepfather who was catholic. It wasn't until 8th grade biology that I heard anything different. It wasn't until I was an adult until I started hearing serious discussions about evolution.

Some of these issues science can readily test.As just one example, the global flood ca. 4,350 years ago was tested initially by creationist geologists seeking to document that flood. They could not do so, and had to admit that the flood did not occur as described. This capitulation occurred in the early 1800s, long before Darwin.Since then the evidence that there was no global flood ca. 4,350 years ago has become overwheming. It is so easy to disprove this that any archaeologist can do it.I've done it in my own research. What one needs to do is find an archaeological site that cross-cuts the 4,350 year time period. A site that does so by thousands of years is best. Then you examine what occurred before and after that time period, and you look to see if there is any evidence of a major discontinuity at that time.What I have found in the many sites that I have tested is that there is no discontinuity about 4,350 years ago. Instead there is continuity. I've seen continuity of human cultures, fauna and flora, sedimentary deposition, and mtDNA patterns. This last one is the most telling: the mtDNA patterns were the same both before and after the 4,350 year date.This shows that there was no discontinuity, as would be caused by a global flood which wiped out all but a select group in the Near East. If there was such a flood, all human mtDNA would be eliminated at about 4,350 years ago and would have been replaced by one type from the Near East (Noah's female kin). This can be shown not to have happened. The same type of evidence can be shown for all fauna and flora: there was no extinction-repopulation event in recent times.This is the kind of evidence that scientists look at.

Hi Dr, Your car was not created.It was produced on an assembly line from parts that was made from existing material.So your car was produced by ordinary processes.

quote:

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create: [kree-eyt] verb, created, creating, adjective
verb, (used with object)
1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.

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Create Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.comHas the universe existed eternally in the past in some form?
OR
Did the universe begin to exist?God Bless,

I don't believe the biblical genealogies were meant as time measuring instruments, so the whole 4350 year old flood is a bogus argument to me. The flood happened at the hadean/archean boundary. That is 3.9 billion years ago according to radiometric methods. I believe in accelerated radioactive decay so the hadean/archean boundary is actually much younger than that. How much so? I don't know. Much of the sedimentary strata in the geological column is due to marine transgressions and regressions. If we could measure the amount of sediment accumulation on a shore that is currently experiencing either transgression or regression and compare it to the depth of marine sediment of known radiometric age, we could have a more realistic age of the earth.Edited by foreveryoung, : No reason given.

These are ideas that can be tested against evidence.Accelerated radioactive decay was one of the things the RATE group tested, using over a million dollars in creationist money.They essentially found that science was right, but refused to believe the evidence they themselves generated.Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy IsaacAssessing the RATE ProjectDo the RATE Findings Negate Mainstream Science?http://184.173.80.159/...RATEFindingsNegateMainstreamScienceThe initial part of the conclusion from this last link:

Young-earth creationists have long claimed there is no evidence for an old Earth. The fact that billions of years of nuclear decay have occurred in Earth history has been denied by most young-earth creationists. Now, the RATE team has admitted that, taken at face value, radiometric dating data is most easily and directly explained by the Earth being billions of years old. This is a remarkable development because no longer can young-earth creationists claim it is merely the naturalistic worldview that makes scientists believe rocks and minerals are millions or billions of years old.

As for the marine transgressions and regressions in the geologic column: we can directly date some of the layers in that column using radiometric methods. Creationists' attempts to discredit radiometric dating have not been successful, as was pointed out in the reviews of the RATE group's project.Our own poster RAZD has several lengthy threads here on the subject of radiometric dating and all of the various ways in which independent methods of dating produce similar results. I think you should review those threads before you attempt to claim anything to the contrary.

It sounds to me like the RATE team just gave up and quit. They don't have to believe that the only explanation for billions of years of radioactive is a billions of years old earth. What made them give up? Why is it impossible for accelerated decay? I know that the sedimentary layers have been dated. That wasn't my point. Has anyone measured how fast sediment is accumulated in a transgression or regression? Has anyone dated a layer of sediment using that measurement? If so, what age did they come up with? As for reading something before I comment, I would never comment if I did that. If you know what the material said, then tell me the summary. Don't make me spend hours at the library so to speak just so I can have a discussion with you.

There are of course other definitions of create on that page you linked to, but we need not even consider them in order to identify the problem with your logic.

quote:

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1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.

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Note that in the above definition there are two alternatives.1) ... that would not naturally evolve
OR (not AND)
2) ...that is not made by ordinary processes.Since a car would not naturally evolve, we cannot rule out that a car was created merely because it was made by ordinary processes.Even if we ignore the error delineated above, your basic argument is still without merit. We don't use the term "Creationist" to refer to just any history of the universe.Exactly what do you hope to accomplish by re-defining the term Creationist anyway? Isn't it pretty obvious that every person participating in this thread knows exactly what the thread is about, even if you don't like their use of the word Creationist?But just in case your confusion is sincere, this thread is about how people first encountered beliefs similar to the ones you and foreveryoung hold about the origin of the universe, the earth, and mankind. You can provide your own label, but your goofy musings and misuse of the dictionary really aren't on point.

I'll leave you to argue that one out with yourself. I don't know. I do know that I am not a creationist, since that word has a meaning and does not describe me.---Why is it important to you to lie about whether I'm a creationist? Is it for the sheer delight of saying things that are obviously untrue, or do you consider it more as a means to an end?

Give up? Oh no, they didn't give up. What gave you that impression? Coyote merely said that they found that all the evidence proved them wrong. But they're creationists, that didn't make them give up. It's not like they're scientists or something.What happened was this. They found that the rocks showed evidence of hundreds of millions of years of radioactive decay. So then they postulated an unevidenced, unobserved mechanism ("accelerated decay") contrary to the known laws of nature, that would make it look like the Earth was old when it was young. But then they noticed that this mechanism would have melted the Earth, boiled the seas, and killed Noah and his floating zoo. So then they postulated an unevidenced, unobserved mechanism contrary to the known laws of nature that would get rid of the heat and make it look like accelerated decay hadn't happened when it had. Then they concluded that the Bible was reliable.You will notice that by such methods one need never give up on any belief. If you think the sky is green with pink spots, and you look and see that it is blue ... no problem. All you have to do is postulate an unevidenced, unobserved mechanism contrary to the known laws of nature that makes it look blue when it's green with pink spots. You need never give up. Of course, if you do that, you have given up doing science, but you haven't given up your precious, precious belief in the youth of the earth or the greenness of the sky or whatever proposition, contrary to the observed evidence, you would like to believe in despite of all the mere observations that you've ever made.---In case you think I'm making any of this up, here's something I wrote about RATE on a previous thread, with quotes, links, and references.---Let us turn to the much-vaunted RATE project of the Institute For Creation Research. Amongst their findings, they admit: This is the point at which an actual scientist would start to think that maybe the Earth wasn't all that young. But no, they have a better idea --- "highly accelerated nuclear decay". Though the details are somewhat sketchy: The details of how this could have happened are not so much sketchy as non-existent.At this point I should like to mention that the slogan of the Institute For Creation Reasearch is "Biblical. Accurate. Certain."It has of course been pointed out to the folks at the ICR that this "accelerated decay" would have melted the Earth, boiled the seas, and killed off Noah and his maritime menagerie. As RATE member Larry Vardiman admits: But they are equal to the challenge: "With one bound, Jack was free!"How exactly God achieved this is unclear even to them. As they admit: In short, they have discovered the principle of Smacco's Rozar: To any hypothesis, no matter how contrary to reality, further hypotheses may be added to explain away the discrepancy.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Can you point me at any papers on this? Thanks.

To me, that sounds a bit more pantheistic than monotheistic. Is humanity a created thing? If we are in communion with God, is it the same as being part of God?Did God create Himself?Personally I believe that God always existed but that matter,energy, and life were created things.I suppose, however, that we could argue that if we are in communion with God through His Son, we ourselves always existed in His imagination...as did everything else. It just strikes me as more of a pantheistic view as opposed to a monotheistic/communion view.