special creation evidence

[Butters]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here, so take it easy please!

My intersest is the theory of special creation.
I am not intersested in a discussion of God vs atheism. What I'm interested in, is how the theory of special creation explains the evidence we have of our world and universe. For instance, if special creation claims that the universe is only 6000 years old, what evidence do we see to confirm this? If animals and men did not evolve from a common ancestor, but were created all at once, fully formed, how does this explain the fossil record? What about cro-magnen man? They were definatly not apes, but they were also not men, as we are, what were they?
Please, I am not trying to be cynical, I have always been taught that the universe was billions of years old, and we evolved from simpler animals. After talking to a creationist, and commenting that he didn't know anything about evolution, he rightly pointed out that I knew nothing about creationism. The problem is all the info I can find, either tries to dispute evolution, or just points to the Bible. I could accept that the universe is only 6000 years old, if thats where the evidence points. Any help?

Thanks!

[tgamble]

[i]Today @ 06:32 PM how does this explain the fossil record? What about cro-magnen man? They were definatly not apes, but they were also not men, as we are, what were they?

Men, as we are.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/cromagnon.html

The rest of your questions are good ones but the most you'll get is the claim that creation is a better explanation for the fossil record. But that's only if you ignore the transitional fossils etc.

Please, I am not trying to be cynical, I have always been taught that the universe was billions of years old, and we evolved from simpler animals. After talking to a creationist, and commenting that he didn't know anything about evolution, he rightly pointed out that I knew nothing about creationism. The problem is all the info I can find, either tries to dispute evolution, or just points to the Bible. I could accept that the universe is only 6000 years old, if thats where the evidence points. Any help? Thanks!

Well, answersingenesis and ICR point to alleged evidence for a young earth, but you won't find any in scientific sources.

all their alleged evidence has been refuted long ago and is basically a desperate attempt to cling to a young earth merely because the Bible (according to them) insists on one.

The best thing you can do here is visit the above websites see if any of it seems convincing. If it does, come back here and get the counter arguments and judge for yourself.

Their attacks on radiometric dating are a bit more complex. You might want to read some books on the subject (some of em are even written by Christians so you can't reallly accuse them of antibible bias). YEC attacks on RD typically depend on distortion and dishonesty.

One of the arguments I've seen for the ressurection is that for it to be a hoax or something it must be a vast and impossible one. These same people have no problem making conspiracy claims against the entire scientific community. Thousands of scientsits from all different faiths agree that the earth is old (and that evolution is right) yet they're all lying/mistaken and surpressing the truth from creationists. Does that sound plausable to you?

Hope that helps. Study both sides with an open mind and you'll inevitably discover that YECism is as ridiculous as claiming the earth doesn't move. Believe it or not, that claim is still being made!
http://www.fixedearth.com

[Socratism]

Today @ 01:32 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=45449#post45449)
Butters:

Hello everyone! This is my first post here, so take it easy please!

My intersest is the theory of special creation.
I am not intersested in a discussion of God vs atheism. What I'm interested in, is how the theory of special creation explains the evidence we have of our world and universe. For instance, if special creation claims that the universe is only 6000 years old, what evidence do we see to confirm this? If animals and men did not evolve from a common ancestor, but were created all at once, fully formed, how does this explain the fossil record? What about cro-magnen man? They were definatly not apes, but they were also not men, as we are, what were they?
Please, I am not trying to be cynical, I have always been taught that the universe was billions of years old, and we evolved from simpler animals. After talking to a creationist, and commenting that he didn't know anything about evolution, he rightly pointed out that I knew nothing about creationism. The problem is all the info I can find, either tries to dispute evolution, or just points to the Bible. I could accept that the universe is only 6000 years old, if thats where the evidence points. Any help?

Thanks!

From your post I seem to detect some misconceptions you might have about "special creation" and probably some other things.

First about evidence. It does not point: it is inert. People are the ones who point and they do so by making judgments based on their background and experience in the world (including their world view).

Inferences depend on assumptions. If the assumptions are wrong the inferences are affected.

It is initially a shock to most people that the Bible implies a young Earth. It was for me. It is for everybody taught that the Earth is billions of years old. But how do we know the Earth is that old? We trust the experts. However, if we actually look into the details with a skeptic's eye we notice something very peculiar: lots of the data is discarded because it "doesn't fit". This should raise a red flag for people trained that science doesn't do things like that. The point is that "selection" is being applied to the raw data so that results fit preconceived notions. To me this indicates that the conventional explanations and assumptions are probably wrong and thus the calculations of age based on the raw data may be equally wrong, perhaps by many orders of magnitude. In other words the effects assumed to be due to age may have a completely different explanation which has nothing to do with age at all.

I will answer your other points in a separate post.

[tgamble]

First about evidence. It does not point: it is inert. People are the ones who point and they do so by making judgments based on their background and experience in the world (including their world view).

RIght. Just because someone has a knife in their back doesn't mean he was murdered. That's just a fallable judgement. ROTFL!

Actually, the evidence DOES point. Radiometric dating has nothing to do with background or world view. That's a lie. Nothing more, nothing less.

Christians 200 years ago realized the evidence pointed away from a global flood and a young earth. Their "world view" had nothing to do with it.

Even if the judgemenst WERE based on world view and were biased, that's what peer review is for. Something creationsits don't really bother with.

However, if we actually look into the details with a skeptic's eye we notice something very peculiar: lots of the data is discarded because it "doesn't fit". This should raise a red flag for people trained that science doesn't do things like that.

Yup, dishonesty and claims of conspiracies and false accusations. The favorite tactics of creationists.

He's claiming that radiometric dates that don't fit are disgarded because they don't conform to an old earth and all the geologists (christians included) would reject anything that indicates a young earth or casts doubt on RD.

What a load od absolute RUBBISH!

For accurate information on RD, see the articles on this page.
http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html

Some of em are even written by Christians.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-geochronology.html

http://asa.calvin.edu/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Or try the Affiliation of Christian Geologists if you have more questions.
http://www.wheaton.edu/acg/

It's creationists, not scientists, who disregard data that doesn't fit. They even admit it.

[RufusAtticus]

Hi Butters,

It's a good topic. I've already started two threads on this exact topic and only one person tried to answer it. I do have some things to point out though.

Men are animals. So it is best that you use the phrase "If men and the other animals..." Same thing with your comments about "apes." Cro-mangon men are definately apes, just like we are definately apes. You're point is that they are definately human just not modern humans, am I correct?

[Socratism]

Butters,

the theory of special creation

Some people mischaracterize this term to mean that all life forms present today were originbally created during 6 days and have never subsequently changed.

This is not the understanding of most creationists. In fact most of us believe that creatures can and do vary widely, and that the mechanisms designed in their geneomes are capable of generating great variation in very short periods of time. What we object to is the teaching by evolutionists that this process has no limits and is capable of major transformation such as dinosaurs to birds.

We believe that t the beginning there were multiple original lifeforms, not a single primitive replicating molecule, and that these original forms were "specially" created by God. This is the meaning of the term "special creation". There is nothing in this concept that denies that lifeforms can vary greatly as a result of the descent process. In fact, it was necessary that a rapid variation capability would be designed into the first forms in order for the Earth to be rapidly repopulated following the Flood catastrophe.

[Socratism]

Butters,

the fossil record

The actual evidence of the fossil record is a big problem for evolution.

Darwin pointed out that the lowest layers of the fossil record contains representatives of essentially all phyla of lifeforms.

This is a problem because his theory was that everything started from a single lifeform, which very gradulaly changed over vast periods of times, first splitting or else transforming into a slightly different form, first a new genus, and then higfher and higher categories of classification until finally the phylum level is reached.
Thus we should see this process as we move up higher in the geological/fossil layers. But this is not what we see. We see essentially all the phyla coming into existence in the lowest layer that has any significant number of fossils in it (there are some rare exceptions that contain a few creatures not readily classified)

Darwin's premise was that the fossil record was imperfect and as time went on the "mystery" of the so-called Cambrian Explosion would be filled in by subsequent findings of earlier fossils. Basically this has not happened.

There is a second problem with the fossil record supporting evolution. Paleontologists have known for a long time that the fossils do not show a slow, gradual progression which records major transformations of lifeforms. What it shows is abrupt appearance of a new form, relatively modest change for millions of years, followed in many cases by extinction. For example, ants trapped in amber supposedly many millions of years ago look essentially identical to the ants we have today. The same is true for other types of insects trapped in supposedly ancient amber.

A new theory has been proposed to explain the mystery: punctuated equilibrium. This states that it is normal for species to remain static for millions of years, but sometimes in a small isolated population changes occur so rapidly they result in a major transformation and because the population is small and the time scale relatively short no record has been captured in the fossil record which is thus imperfect and somewhat hapzard.
(Actually this is not "new" because Mayr claims to have suggested this in 1954).

[Socratism]

If you believe that story you are a good candidate for buying "prime" swampland in Florida.

[tgamble]

In a desperate effort to attack evolution, you refer to a source 140 years old! You also parrot a lot of misinformation.

No matter, here's some accurate information.

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/fossil_record.htm

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/whale_evolution.htm

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/therapsd.htm

http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_00.htm

[tgamble]

Darwin pointed out that the lowest layers of the fossil record contains representatives of essentially all phyla of lifeforms.

ROTFL! That's a good one!

Pity you were serious.

Can you actually support that claim?

http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/

Go ahead. I dare you.

Darwin's premise was that the fossil record was imperfect and as time went on the "mystery" of the so-called Cambrian Explosion would be filled in by subsequent findings of earlier fossils. Basically this has not happened.


Actually it has happened as the links I just posted illustrate. Darwin's predictions of finding more transitional fossils have come true.

BTW, the cambrian is NOT the lowest layer. You're ignoring the precambrian.

[Butters]

Wow! That was a lot of responses!

tgamble, thanks for the web-site, I see I've forgotten alot since school, What I think I was reffering to was Neandertal man. It seems that this was NOT the same spieces(?) as us? Is this right?

Socratism, Yes, I'm sure I do have some misconceptions about creationism. From what I understand is that this theory says that God created plants, animals, men, the Earth, and everything in one week. This happened 6000(?) years ago. Somewhere around 4000(?) years ago, their was a global flood that killed everything execpt what was on Noahs Ark. Is this correct?

Also as to evidence pointing. It seems to me that it does. Take the age of the universe. We can see stars that are hundreds of light years away. It seems to me that this "points" to the conclusion that the universe is very old. This is a natural conclusion, based soley on the evidence. It is also independent of any other observation or world view. It so happens that this evidence fits in with the evolution model, but so what? Based soley on this observation, God could have created people fully formed millions of years after he created the universe. But no matter what theory you hold to, or even if you have no other theory, the universe we see "points" to the conclusion that it is old(older than 6000 years). So, what in this observation, would lead me to conclude that the universe is only 6000 years old?

RuffasAtticus, I don't know if men are animals or not, but we are different from them. On the other hand, looking at apes, and looking at humans, it's easy to believe we have a common ancestor. A shar-pai, and a wolf don't look any similar than us and apes.

Posted by Soccratism,
"We believe that t the beginning there were multiple original lifeforms, not a single primitive replicating molecule, and that these original forms were "specially" created by God. This is the meaning of the term "special creation". There is nothing in this concept that denies that lifeforms can vary greatly as a result of the descent process. In fact, it was necessary that a rapid variation capability would be designed into the first forms in order for the Earth to be rapidly repopulated following the Flood catastrophe."

Can you direct me to a web-site that explains the fossil record in these terms?

As for "punctuated equilibrum", from what I've seen so far, this makes sense. Whaching the discovery channel, they show how dinosaurs lived until the Earth was hit by an astriod, in the severe climate change, mammals survived, and changed rapidly to adapt to the new climate, it makes sense to me.

Thanks for all the interest!

[Woman]

Butters,

Welcome!

I'm neither Christian nor atheist, but believe that intelligence is evident all through the kosmos.

Earth. Old. Very old. Evolution. True.

Keep in mind that one ploy some creationists (and here I'm talking about the Young Earth, literal Genesis ones) use is to describle evolution using another name for it - agree with it totally as part of God's plan and then say, but evolution does not exist. They will tell you that evolutionists think they know how life started. Not true. They will tell you that "creation science" is actively engaged in research to provide evidence for special creation. Actually they are engaged in a campaign to discredit any branch of science which denies the supernatural.

Science isn't innocent either. Academics have long played political games, clung for too long to previously held ideas and pontificated to the faithful.

There is just a whole lot of great conversation here about the subject. Check out the threads.


Socratism says:
The theory of special creation...Some people mischaracterize this term to mean that all life forms present today were originbally created during 6 days and have never subsequently changed.

This is not the understanding of most creationists. In fact most of us believe that creatures can and do vary widely, and that the mechanisms designed in their geneomes are capable of generating great variation in very short periods of time. What we object to is the teaching by evolutionists that this process has no limits and is capable of major transformation such as dinosaurs to birds.*remind me to send you the achaeopteryx info.

We believe that t the beginning there were multiple original lifeforms, not a single primitive replicating molecule, and that these original forms were "specially" created by God. This is the meaning of the term "special creation". There is nothing in this concept that denies that lifeforms can vary greatly as a result of the descent process. (descent process? Ya mean evolution?) In fact, it was necessary that a rapid variation capability would be designed into the first forms in order for the Earth to be rapidly repopulated following the Flood catastrophe. (which according to most creationists happened only about 4,500 years ago, at which time people and dinosaurs were still living side by side)

Anyway, Butters - welcome aboard! Enjoy Theology Web!

:cheers:

[Socratism]

Woman,
When I say that I believe in the descent process that means I believe I had a father and a mother and that I vary from either one of them. I would not call that "evolution".

Get it?

[Saxonella]

Today @ 08:48 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=45524#post45524)
Socratism:

Butters,

The actual evidence of the fossil record is a big problem for evolution.

Darwin pointed out that the lowest layers of the fossil record contains representatives of essentially all phyla of lifeforms.

This is a problem because his theory was that everything started from a single lifeform, which very gradulaly changed over vast periods of times, first splitting or else transforming into a slightly different form, first a new genus, and then higfher and higher categories of classification until finally the phylum level is reached.
Thus we should see this process as we move up higher in the geological/fossil layers. But this is not what we see. We see essentially all the phyla coming into existence in the lowest layer that has any significant number of fossils in it (there are some rare exceptions that contain a few creatures not readily classified)

You have made a very fundamental error here: you have confused the process of evolution and the historical pattern it is likely to create, with the process of classification. Let me see if I can explain.

The largest "real" taxonomic group that exists in nature is the species. Only species, and populations within species, evolve. Species that are very closely related and which are very similar to each other are grouped together within a category called "Genus", and species which have a certain degree of difference from those are placed into separate genera. The degree of difference sufficient to either lump organisms together into the same genus or put them into a different genus will vary depending upon the organism under consideration, but generally there is a specific and consistent set of similarities one looks for that allows one to decide. However, each genus *must* consist of at least one, and usually a number, of species (else the genus could not exist).

Likewise, if there are several of these genera that are very similar to each other, each containing its group of species, these genera are grouped together into a category called Family. Each Family contains a group of genera that are more closely similar to other genera within that Family but different from genera in another Family--and each genus within the family category consists of a group of very similar species. Therefore, each Family consists of at least two groups of species.

And this is the crucial point: every taxonomic category, no matter how far up the scale it is, consists of species arranged into groups. And this is because any taxonomic group above the level of species is simply a convenient pigeonhole that humans have arranged species into. Which is why taxonomists can create groups as they need them, such as Superfamily or Suborder. All diversity is the result of speciation: the division of a parent species into two daughter species, and the subsequent branching of those daughter species into more species, and so on. After enough time and branching, that original species is not going to resemble a ggggranddaughter species very closely, and it will not be categorized into the same group as its ggggranddaughter species, but is still a species nonetheless.

Which means that "phyla" did not appear on earth first--species did. All phyla are made up of species. A "phylum" is simply the name humans have given to a very large category of species that all share a certain set of attributes. And really, it makes sense if you take time to think about it--you can't have a "phylum" until you have something to put into it, right?

In other words, life did *not* "transform" into genera and then into families; species gave rise to other species which gave rise to other species and so on in the vastness of geological time. Species differ from each other due to differing attributes; some of these attributes are very ancient (like a notochord), while other attributes are very recent (like flattened nails on primate digits). Still, no matter the age of the attribute, it arose in a species. Only humans came up with categories called "genus" and "phylum" in order to make sense of the patterns that are apparent in the fossil record and to account for the fact that some species have arisen rather more recently than other species.

So Butters, I hope you can see that it is not the fossil record that is a problem. Properly understood, it reflects the pattern that evolution would predict it to have, to the point that people have successfully predicted what kind of organisms should be found given the evidence to hand. This includes a recent discovery in amber of an intermediate between ants and wasps, the sort of thing that you (Socratism) say below is not found.

Darwin's premise was that the fossil record was imperfect and as time went on the "mystery" of the so-called Cambrian Explosion would be filled in by subsequent findings of earlier fossils. Basically this has not happened.

Can you say "Ediacara"? "Vendian"? Do you deny that these are earlier than the Cambrian?

There is a second problem with the fossil record supporting evolution. Paleontologists have known for a long time that the fossils do not show a slow, gradual progression which records major transformations of lifeforms. What it shows is abrupt appearance of a new form, relatively modest change for millions of years, followed in many cases by extinction.

This is extremely oversimplified--almost cartoonish. It certainly comes nowhere near addressing the great variation of preservation of lineages actually found in nature. One would be tempted to assume that you have had very little formal exposure to original, mainstream paleontology.

A lot of lineages are not preserved complete. Mostly these are the large terrestrial vertebrate lineages we tend to hear and read most about in the popular literature. However, given the vagaries of fossilization (you do not expect that this is a common occurrance, do you?), it is remarkable what we do find--such as the origin of mammals from their synapsid precursors. Or the origin of tetrapods. Or the succession of hominins.

The fact is, we have many different levels of preservation: some apparently abrupt, some rather more gradual, and some, like the deep-sea-core record of foraminifera, almost unbroken for several million years at a time.

For example, ants trapped in amber supposedly many millions of years ago look essentially identical to the ants we have today. The same is true for other types of insects trapped in supposedly ancient amber.

Except that Sphecomyrma freyi, one of the earliest ants ever found in amber, is very wasplike.

If you go here:

http://research.amnh.org/entomology/social_insects/publications/ms_sphecomyrma.html#fig2a

and scroll not quite halfway down, you will find the formal published description of this ant. Note the comment by E. O. Wilson at the end of the "Description" paragraph.

A new theory has been proposed to explain the mystery: punctuated equilibrium. This states that it is normal for species to remain static for millions of years, but sometimes in a small isolated population changes occur so rapidly they result in a major transformation and because the population is small and the time scale relatively short no record has been captured in the fossil record which is thus imperfect and somewhat hapzard.
(Actually this is not "new" because Mayr claims to have suggested this in 1954).

Please be aware that punctuated equilibrium is a hypothesis about evolutionary rates and patterns, and not about evolutionary mechanisms. It is recognized as a form of allopatric speciation and was indeed initially proposed by Mayr (but without the "stasis" part).

[tgamble]

Today @ 10:13 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=45584#post45584)
Butters:

Wow! That was a lot of responses!

tgamble, thanks for the web-site, I see I've forgotten alot since school, What I think I was reffering to was Neandertal man. It seems that this was NOT the same spieces(?) as us? Is this right?


Neanderthal are typically classified as a subspecies of homo saipens. Homo saipens neanderthalis if I'm not mistaken. Check out
http://www.talkorigins.org/homs/faqs

Socratism, Yes, I'm sure I do have some misconceptions about creationism. From what I understand is that this theory says that God created plants, animals, men, the Earth, and everything in one week. This happened 6000(?) years ago. Somewhere around 4000(?) years ago, their was a global flood that killed everything execpt what was on Noahs Ark. Is this correct?

Don't forget the "variation with kinds" bit. What is a kind you ask? Who knows! But any evolution is just variation because. WEll just because. Just accept it. :-)

Also as to evidence pointing. It seems to me that it does. Take the age of the universe. We can see stars that are hundreds of light years away. It seems to me that this "points" to the conclusion that the universe is very old. This is a natural conclusion, based soley on the evidence. It is also independent of any other observation or world view. It so happens that this evidence fits in with the evolution model, but so what?

So it MUST be false because it contradicts a young earth which is the TRUTH!. So obviously the speed of light has changed or God created light in transit. Anything ANYTHING to avoid an old universe!

RuffasAtticus, I don't know if men are animals or not, but we are different from them. On the other hand, looking at apes, and looking at humans, it's easy to believe we have a common ancestor. A shar-pai, and a wolf don't look any similar than us and apes.

Maybe not but consider that a wolf and a human are both mammals and both are vertebrates etc.

If you don't think humans are animals (for some reason, this disturbs people) what kingdom do you think we belong to?
http://volweb.utk.edu/Schools/sullivan/mhme/taxonomy.htm

As for "punctuated equilibrum", from what I've seen so far, this makes sense. Whaching the discovery channel, they show how dinosaurs lived until the Earth was hit by an astriod, in the severe climate change, mammals survived, and changed rapidly to adapt to the new climate, it makes sense to me.

Well, that's not exactly what PE is since the evolution of mammals after the dinosaur extinction left behind a good fossil record and took millions of years. PE deals with the species level and reletivly short periods of time.

Thanks for all the interest!

No problem!

[Woman]

Socratism says:
Woman,
When I say that I believe in the descent process that means I believe I had a father and a mother and that I vary from either one of them. I would not call that "evolution".

Get it?

No. I don't. Just how does the fact that you were born and aren't a clone constitute a "descent process?" Maybe you should define that first. Then we can discuss whether or not it means something very like or totally different than Evolution.

Socratism:
In fact most of us believe that creatures can and do vary widely, and that the mechanisms designed in their geneomes are capable of generating great variation in very short periods of time.

Here again, I'm assuming you mean "great variations" to be more than let's say...your parents both have straight hair and yours is curly?

:cool:

[Saxonella]

Today @ 10:13 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=45584#post45584)
Butters:

Wow! That was a lot of responses!

tgamble, thanks for the web-site, I see I've forgotten alot since school, What I think I was reffering to was Neandertal man. It seems that this was NOT the same spieces(?) as us? Is this right?

Hah! The consensus from the paleoanthropological community on that is...we don't know! Actually, there is no consensus. A large proportion think that Neandertals are a subspecies of us, i.e. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, while others just as firmly believe they are a separate species: Homo neanderthalensis. Whatever the case (and probably what makes it so difficult to figure out), Neandertals are our closest relatives and were extremely similar. You might sometimes find creationists claim that evolutionists do not beleive that Neandertals were "human"--but don't fall for it. Neandertals were human. Just not identical to us.

(My own personal opinion is that Neandertals are a separate species, based almost entirely on an operational definition of species having a certain degree of morphological differences. But I am prepared to be wrong about it).

:wink:

[Socratism]

Sax,

I agree completely that species are the only real representatives in the tree of life and that the other classifications are groupings of species with various degrees of shared characteristics. Of course I already knew that and it raises some other interesting ramifications which I will save for a more appropriate thread.

Be that as it may this does not negate the fact that the lifeforms in the Cambrian can be grouped into different phyla and according to the evolutionary scenario this shouldn't be possible unless the different species in the Cambrian had already developed characteristics that are used today to group lifeforms into those known phyla. In other words the species found in the Cambrian had already developed those characteristics that today are used to classify lifeforms into distinct phyla on the tree of life. There appears to have been a whole lot of evolution of distinct phyla characteristics going on in the Cambrian (and very little ever since).

It is frequently stated that these Cambrian lifeforms were "primitive" but this is a loaded word with heavy evolutionary implications. One might say that many current lifeforms are "primitive" depending on one's view of what that term means. I have heard evolutionists say that the eye of the trilobite was far from primitive and in some ways equally sophisticated as the human eye.

As far as the trace fossils found below the Cambrian they are few and far between and most seem to be quite different than those found in the Cambrian and certainly it is unclear where they fit in classification schemes. Many of them might deserve there own unique branches in the "tree of life".

I didn't expect evolutionists to roll over and play dead by what I posted about the fossil record for one can always invent stories to explain any possible findings in nature. After all, that is what evolutionist mainly do and they get pretty good at it with practice.

As far as where I get my information from, in this case I am using mostly Gould with some Mayr thrown in. I previously mentioned that most of my reading on these subjects is from the leading recognized "experts" in the various fields.

BTW have you read Gould's last tome prior to his death? 1500 pages is a tough read isn't it?

[tgamble]

Hah! The consensus from the paleoanthropological community on that is...we don't know! Actually, there is no consensus.

There's a consensus that they weren't humans with rickets!

A large proportion think that Neandertals are a subspecies of us, i.e. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, while others just as firmly believe they are a separate species:

There wouldn't be a disagreement if there were seperate distict created kinds.....

You might sometimes find creationists claim that evolutionists do not beleive that Neandertals were "human"--but don't fall for it. Neandertals were human. Just not identical to us.

In fact, they were so NOT indentical that they are a seperate species. Or at most, a subspecies.

I suggest you (butters) read up on the scientific literature. Look at the physical chararteristics of both and draw your own conclusions.

[Butters]

Thanks for the welcome woman! (why does that sound condesending?) And thanks for everyones responses. I was reading some of the other threads, and I read this

"I think it is fair to say that to an ancient observer no obvious evidence exists outside of scripture that would lead to that conclusion. This is probably why God furnished the evidence as a revelation." Posted by Socratism. This really disturbed me. Is this true? Do you believe in creationism only because of the Bible? It seems to me, thay whatever happened in the past, always leaves traces, those traces should tell us something about what actually happened. These traces would be independent of what our theological beliefs may be. If the earth is 6000 years old, why can I see stars thousands of light years away? Now if we only saw light from stars that could have reached us in 6000 years, we would have to accept that the universe is only 6000 years old, no matter what we believed about God. Does this make any sense or not?

Thanks

[Woman]

Socratism says:
Woman,
When I say that I believe in the descent process that means I believe I had a father and a mother and that I vary from either one of them. I would not call that "evolution".

Get it?

Me:
No. I don't. Just how does the fact that you were born and aren't a clone constitute a "descent process?" Maybe you should define that first. Then we can discuss whether or not it means something very like or totally different than Evolution.

Socratism:
In fact most of us believe that creatures can and do vary widely, and that the mechanisms designed in their geneomes are capable of generating great variation in very short periods of time.

Me:
Here again, I'm assuming you mean "great variations" to be more than let's say...your parents both have straight hair and yours is curly?

Socratism's rebuttal:
I didn't expect evolutionists to roll over and play dead by what I posted about the fossil record for one can always invent stories to explain any possible findings in nature. After all, that is what evolutionist mainly do and they get pretty good at it with practice.

So, let me just be clear on this. You are accusing me inventing stories because that's what we (evolutionists) mainly do and we're pretty good at it?

If this is, indeed, your contention - could you either provide evidence of this or consider rephrasing?

Thank-You

[Saxonella]

Yesterday @ 11:46 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=45662#post45662)
Socratism:

Sax,
...

Be that as it may this does not negate the fact that the lifeforms in the Cambrian can be grouped into different phyla and according to the evolutionary scenario this shouldn't be possible unless the different species in the Cambrian had already developed characteristics that are used today to group lifeforms into those known phyla. In other words the species found in the Cambrian had already developed those characteristics that today are used to classify lifeforms into distinct phyla on the tree of life. There appears to have been a whole lot of evolution of distinct phyla characteristics going on in the Cambrian (and very little ever since).

Once again, it seems you misunderstand: the basic body plan attributes used to define a phylum are chosen precisely because they are extremely generalized and ancient, and because they are so highly conserved they almost by definition will be found on the earliest organisms. We have deliberately defined a "phylum" that way because it is supposed to be the most inclusive category after "Kingdom".

The "evolutionary scenario" says that populations and species evolve. It appears that we agree on that. Classification is not an "evolutionary scenario", save for the fact that modern classificatory schemes try to group organisms based upon their evolutionary history (which is why chimpanzees--genus Pan--are now included in the subfamily Homininae, along with the genus Homo and exclude gorillas-- enough morphological and molecular evidence has accumulated to conclusively demonstrate that chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to anything else).

It is frequently stated that these Cambrian lifeforms were "primitive" but this is a loaded word with heavy evolutionary implications. One might say that many current lifeforms are "primitive" depending on one's view of what that term means. I have heard evolutionists say that the eye of the trilobite was far from primitive and in some ways equally sophisticated as the human eye.

Yes, it does depend on what is meant by the word "primitive"; I tend to use it in a very narrow context, which is that of cladistics, wherein it has a very specific meaning that has nothing to do with notions of being more or less "developed" or "complex". But that is probably a long post on its own. The problem is that there is so often a great difference between how scientists or specialists use terms and how they get used by the general public.

As far as the trace fossils found below the Cambrian they are few and far between and most seem to be quite different than those found in the Cambrian and certainly it is unclear where they fit in classification schemes. Many of them might deserve there own unique branches in the "tree of life".

Well, the Ediacaran fossils are not exactly "trace fossils", nor are they all that uncommon. But if the majority of organisms of the Precambrian and earliest Cambrian were soft-bodied, surely it is not an intellectual stretch to realize how rarely they'd likely be preserved.

I agree that some of them may indeed represent basic body plans, or phyla, that didn't quite "make it".

I didn't expect evolutionists to roll over and play dead by what I posted about the fossil record for one can always invent stories to explain any possible findings in nature. After all, that is what evolutionist mainly do and they get pretty good at it with practice.

That's almost funny! At least our "stories" can be supported by evidence, unlike the "stories" invented by creationists...that is, when they bother. Let's face it: the vast majority of creationist "evidence" consists either of appeals to the Bible, or attempts to discredit evolution. The first is not even close to science, and the latter...well, evidence against evolution, even if you could find some, is not evidence for creation.

As far as where I get my information from, in this case I am using mostly Gould with some Mayr thrown in. I previously mentioned that most of my reading on these subjects is from the leading recognized "experts" in the various fields.

Except that Gould is a leading popularizer, and not a leading working biologist or paleontologist. People often seem to confuse the two. This is not necessarily to discount his ideas, because they are important, as long as one realizes that they are his ideas and do not automatically reflect biological or paleontological consensus. Reading Gould is no excuse for not reading peer-reviewed work or leading university-level textbooks. Gould has less currency amongst working evolutionary biologists than you might think (the same holds for Dawkins). You might be better served by Douglas Futuyma.

(I noticed the same phenomenon around Steven Hawking--the general public seems to think he is one of the great cosmologists; however, in a special I recently saw about him, actual working cosmologists agree that he's "pretty good, maybe in the top 20". Not exactly the paragon of genius we've all assumed, apparently).

BTW have you read Gould's last tome prior to his death? 1500 pages is a tough read isn't it?

Curiously, I haven't even seen it in bookstores yet. I don't know what the deal is. I have read reviews and talked to people who have read it, and they all pretty much say the same thing--he desperately needed an editor, because there is an excellent 600-page book in there trying to get out.

[tgamble]

Today @ 12:41 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=45701#post45701)
Butters:

Thanks for the welcome woman! (why does that sound condesending?) And thanks for everyones responses. I was reading some of the other threads, and I read this

"I think it is fair to say that to an ancient observer no obvious evidence exists outside of scripture that would lead to that conclusion. This is probably why God furnished the evidence as a revelation." Posted by Socratism. This really disturbed me. Is this true? Do you believe in creationism only because of the Bible? It seems to me, thay whatever happened in the past, always leaves traces, those traces should tell us something about what actually happened. These traces would be independent of what our theological beliefs may be. If the earth is 6000 years old, why can I see stars thousands of light years away? Now if we only saw light from stars that could have reached us in 6000 years, we would have to accept that the universe is only 6000 years old, no matter what we believed about God. Does this make any sense or not? Thanks

Perfect sense!

It seems to me, thay whatever happened in the past, always leaves traces, those traces should tell us something about what actually happened. These traces would be independent of what our theological beliefs may be. If the earth is 6000 years old, why can I see stars thousands of light years away?

An excellent question! Keep thinking like that and you'll be a god hating, christian persecuting infidel in no time. :teeth:

Seriously, you can see stars MILLIONS of light years away which is the real problem. Creationists try and explain this away because of a predefineed conclusion that the earth MUST be 6000 years old regardless of evidence. So far, they've failed miserably.

[Butters]

"An excellent question! Keep thinking like that and you'll be a god hating, christian persecuting infidel in no time."

I don't hate anyone, or want to persecute anyone, I just want to find out what REALLY happened. All my freinds and family are Christians, but I had never met (that I know of) someone that believes in creationism until recently. However, I'm beginning to see that creationism is bunk. There seems to be no actual theory, other than the Bible. Creationism DOESN'T explain the evidence, in fact it contradicts it. I was appalled at the dishonesty I encountered on the creationism web-sites. These people are supposed to be Christians! while the evolution theory has some holes in it, it still explains the evidence that we see around us, where it appears that creationism, does not, and only provides weak explainations as to why not.

[tgamble]

Today @ 01:00 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46059#post46059)
Butters:

"An excellent question! Keep thinking like that and you'll be a god hating, christian persecuting infidel in no time."

I don't hate anyone, or want to persecute anyone, I just want to find out what REALLY happened.

I realize that. It was just a joke!

[Butters]

"Theory: If the stars are millions of light years away, and humans can see them flicker in the night sky, then the universe must be very old.
New facts: Not enough time has elapsed for light speeding at 186,282 miles per second to have traversed the entire universe. Yet light has reached the entire expanse of the cosmos, meaning light has travelled faster than the known speed of light at some time in the past. Researchers estimate light may have travelled 1069 times faster at the beginning of the universe. This means the universe is smaller and younger than most scientists believe.
New York Times, May 30, 2000 and
The London Times, Dec. 24, 2000"-
http://www.creationposter.com/sdm.asp?pg=evidence&specific

Does Anyone know anything about this? I see a problem, the artical states that the universe is to young for light to travel the entire expanse of the cosmos. The first problem is how was the age of the universe detirmined indepent of the structure of the universe. How was the conclusion reached that light had reached the entire cosmos? Two articles were cited here, but not quoted from of linked to. I don't want to subscribe to these papers, does anyone have anything on these articles?

Also, my understanding of science is limited, but if the speed of light is not constant, wouldn't that effect everything? Isn't the speed of light an intragel part of the way the universe works? (E=MC2 ?)

Thanks

[tgamble]

Today @ 03:29 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46107#post46107)
Butters:

"Theory: If the stars are millions of light years away, and humans can see them flicker in the night sky, then the universe must be very old.
New facts: Not enough time has elapsed for light speeding at 186,282 miles per second to have traversed the entire universe. Yet light has reached the entire expanse of the cosmos, meaning light has travelled faster than the known speed of light at some time in the past. Researchers estimate light may have travelled 1069 times faster at the beginning of the universe. This means the universe is smaller and younger than most scientists believe.
New York Times, May 30, 2000 and
The London Times, Dec. 24, 2000"-
http://www.creationposter.com/sdm.asp?pg=evidence&specific

Does Anyone know anything about this? I see a problem, the artical states that the universe is to young for light to travel the entire expanse of the cosmos. The first problem is how was the age of the universe detirmined indepent of the structure of the universe. How was the conclusion reached that light had reached the entire cosmos? Two articles were cited here, but not quoted from of linked to. I don't want to subscribe to these papers, does anyone have anything on these articles?

Also, my understanding of science is limited, but if the speed of light is not constant, wouldn't that effect everything? Isn't the speed of light an intragel part of the way the universe works? (E=MC2 ?)

Thanks

I couldn't answer your questions but you're likely to find those that can at the infidels.org discussion board. I'll see what else I can find.

A search on google only gives one result, creationposter.com

The site also mentions other "proofs" for a young earth. EVeryone one of em is totally false and was debunked years ago. So they're probably not telling the whole story.

[Bald Ape]

Today @ 10:29 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46107#post46107)
Butters:

"Theory: If the stars are millions of light years away, and humans can see them flicker in the night sky, then the universe must be very old.
New facts: Not enough time has elapsed for light speeding at 186,282 miles per second to have traversed the entire universe. Yet light has reached the entire expanse of the cosmos, meaning light has travelled faster than the known speed of light at some time in the past. Researchers estimate light may have travelled 1069 times faster at the beginning of the universe. This means the universe is smaller and younger than most scientists believe.
New York Times, May 30, 2000 and
The London Times, Dec. 24, 2000"-
http://www.creationposter.com/sdm.asp?pg=evidence&specific

Does Anyone know anything about this? I see a problem, the artical states that the universe is to young for light to travel the entire expanse of the cosmos. The first problem is how was the age of the universe detirmined indepent of the structure of the universe. How was the conclusion reached that light had reached the entire cosmos? Two articles were cited here, but not quoted from of linked to. I don't want to subscribe to these papers, does anyone have anything on these articles?

Also, my understanding of science is limited, but if the speed of light is not constant, wouldn't that effect everything? Isn't the speed of light an intragel part of the way the universe works? (E=MC2 ?)

Thanks

General rule of thumb: Never trust a creationist website, ya never know when they're lyin' for Jesus. Anyway, one wonders how this particular creationist got his information from the following abstract for the NY Times article (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70B12FD3D580C738FDDAC0894D8404482) which he sites:


Science Desk | May 30, 2000, Tuesday
Faster Than Light, Maybe, But Not Back to the Future

By JAMES GLANZ (NYT) 1584 words
Late Edition - Final , Section F , Page 1 , Column 3 ABSTRACT - Dr Lijun Wang of NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ, causes a pulse of light to pass through a cesium-filled chamber at what appears to be 300 times the normal speed of light; researchers at Italian National Research Council use set of reflecting optics to generate microwave pulses that seem to travel through ordinary air as much as 25 percent faster than the speed of light over short distances; Einstein's theory of relativity emerges unscathed from experiments, but they do spark some speculation on possiblity of superluminal transmission of information; photo Italian researchers, Anedio Ranfagni, Rocco Ruggeri and Daniela Mugnai (M) The speed at which light travels through a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per second, is enshrined in physics lore as a universal speed limit. Nothing can travel faster than that speed, according to freshman textbooks and conversation at sophisticated wine bars; if anything could, Einstein's theory of relativity would crumble, and theoretical physics would fall into disarray.
Two new experiments have demonstrated how flexible or misleading that comfortable wisdom can be in the right circumstances. Using a combination of atomic and electromagnetic effects, researchers have produced light beams in the laboratory that appear to travel much faster than the normal speed of light. Einstein's theory survives, physicists say, but the results of the experiments, they agree, are mind-bending.

There do not seem to be any articles in the December 24, 2000 London Times that mention the speed of light (surprise, surprise).

[Butters]

tgamble, thanks for the help. It did not take me long to figure out that most of whats on that site is bunk. I don't understand how people that call themselves Christians can be so dishonest! It is mind boggeling that avery site promoting creationism is full of the same false information! This is why I said earlier that I can see creationism is bunk. People all over these sires claim that it's the TRUTH, but they never show how, other than to point to scripture. I would have thought that the Galileo incident would have pointed out the folly of relying on scriputre to explaine the natural world.

Bald Ape,
Thank you for the article, I had seen this myself when it came out. Forgotten about it, can't see how it relates to the age of the universe. But I really appreciate you finding it!

Thanks!

[Socratism]

Butters,
The Galileo incident is shamelessly presented as a collision of Science with the Church. Actually it was not nearly that simple. It was more like a collision of the science of Aristotle with that of a few brilliant up and coming scientists of that time.

Politics being what it is the proponents of Aristotilian science enlisted the help of a few clergymen (equivalent to Benny Hinn or other TV evangelists) and successfully turned it into a battle over the authority of the Pope. Since this was the era where the authority of the Church was being attacked from many other quarters for different reasons, the Church prevailed despite the support of many clergy who had earlier been convinced by Galileo and his telescope that Aristotle's view that the Earth was stationary was wrong. There was never any scriptural evidence of any consequence to support the Aristotilian view but neither is there any evidence of consequence in most political battles.

Galileo was a great scientist but a lousey politician.

[Socratism]

With regard to the speed of light I think people are under the impression that nothing can propogate faster than the speed of light. However some astronomers believe that gravity does and others believe that if gravity can do this that it may be that the speed of light was much faster in the past than currently. (None of these astronomers are creationists).

http://www.metaresearch.org/

[Socrates]

Butterball:I don't understand how people that call themselves Christians can be so dishonest! It is mind boggeling that avery site promoting creationism is full of the same false information!Conversely, I DO understand why evolutionists should resort to such fact-free elephant hurling, turn a blind eye to the numerous fakes used to support evolution (Haeckel's embryo pics, Piltdown Man, Archaeoraptor, staged photos of peppered moths), persistently misrepresent creationist arguments (e.g. accusing them of believing in fixity of species), and make inflammatory comments like what Butterball made alhough he will probably squeal like a stuck pig if a creationist replies with anything a tenth as aggressive (just look at Gamble here).

This because evolutionists are acting CONSISTENTLY with a world view that says we are just rearranged pond scum, so there is no transcendent source of objective morality. Therefore it is perfectly CONSISTENT with their world view to bear false witness. After all, morality is merely some chemical process in the brain that conferred some survival advantage on their alleged ape-life ancestors.

Conversely, creationists have strong motivation to be truthful, because Jesus is "the truth" (John 14:6). So on this grounds alone, it makes more sense to trust creationist websites like Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org) and Institute for Creation Research (http://www.icr.org/) over the gutter sites run by the infudgels etc.

[Butters]

Butters,
The Galileo incident is shamelessly presented as a collision of Science with the Church. Actually it was not nearly that simple. It was more like a collision of the science of Aristotle with that of a few brilliant up and coming scientists of that time.

Politics being what it is the proponents of Aristotilian science enlisted the help of a few clergymen (equivalent to Benny Hinn or other TV evangelists) and successfully turned it into a battle over the authority of the Pope. Since this was the era where the authority of the Church was being attacked from many other quarters for different reasons, the Church prevailed despite the support of many clergy who had earlier been convinced by Galileo and his telescope that Aristotle's view that the Earth was stationary was wrong. There was never any scriptural evidence of any consequence to support the Aristotilian view but neither is there any evidence of consequence in most political battles.

Galileo was a great scientist but a lousey politician.


Where the hell do you guys get this crap! You have GOT to be kidding me! BTW The chuch DID admit its mistake, in 1999!

Thanks for the nickname, I guess I should feel proud, but you guys are LOONS! You discount every peice of evidence around you, you spread false claims about every branch of science, you claim that just because detirmining the age of the universe we must ASSUME that conditions in the past must have been pretty much the same as they are now, even though we have no reason to think otherwise, is wrong. It is much more reasonable to believe that a collection of authorless books, written no one knows when, why, where, MUST be true! Can you even see how insane this is?!

GOD, curse the internet, I liked it better when I could pretend that there were only a few nuts in the world.

I mean REALLY! I'm flabergasted! My head hurts! The only consolation is the next time you nuts try to get this crap taught in schools, it'll be easy to show that it IS religion, not science.

Darn! I'm almost hyperventelating, I thought I'd seen madness before, but this stuff takes the cake!

[Socrates]

Socratism (who is not me although it is an honor to be confused with him) correctly pointed out the real story of the Galileo affair, i.e. it was instigated by the Aristotelians at the university who clung to the Ptolemaic model. This is documented in the detailed PDF article The Galileo affair: history or heroic hagiography? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/Magazines/tj/docs/TJ14_1-Galileo.pdf)

Yes, the Catholic Church DID make a mistake -- and that was to interpret the Scriptures in accordance with the science of ITS day! Now people want the Church to make the SAME mistake, and reinterpret Scripture in accordance with today's fashion, i.e. evolution from goo to yo via the zoo.

All Butterball could do is spout more fact-free ranting :rant: and name-calling.

[tgamble]

Conversely, I DO understand why evolutionists should resort to such fact-free elephant hurling, turn a blind eye to the numerous fakes used to support evolution (Haeckel's embryo pics, Piltdown Man, Archaeoraptor, staged photos of peppered moths),


As already pointed out, the staged photographs of peppered moths ae not FAKES. Archaeoraptor was exposed within months of it's discovery. Something creationist never mention. etc. etc. etc.

his because evolutionists are acting CONSISTENTLY with a world view that says we are just rearranged pond scum, so there is no transcendent source of objective morality.


Yet another bald faced lie.

Conversely, creationists have strong motivation to be truthful, because Jesus is "the truth" (John 14:6).

Yet they lie constantly and consistently!

So on this grounds alone, it makes more sense to trust creationist websites like Answers in Genesis and Institute for Creation Research over the gutter sites run by the infudgels etc.

And on the grounds that ICR and AIG have been shown to be liars over and over again, it is wiser to trust more reliable sources, including so called "infidels" or as Socrates (in his typically nasty way) calls em, infudgels. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

Yes, the Catholic Church DID make a mistake -- and that was to interpret the Scriptures in accordance with the science of ITS day!

And threatning torture if Gallieo didn't racant because his new theories conflicted with scripture.

[tgamble]

Now people want the Church to make the SAME mistake, and reinterpret Scripture in accordance with today's fashion, i.e. evolution from goo to yo via the zoo.


It's really quite amusing the way creationists come up with these childish rythmes. They can't refute the facts so they simply mock science in their usual hate filled way.

btw butters, there's a thread (started by me actually) over at infidels.org on that speed of light question you had.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49133

You'll find lots of factual information there. Something you won't find at the antiscience sites like AIG and ICR.

[tgamble]

[i]Today @ 03:26 AM
I mean REALLY! I'm flabergasted! My head hurts! The only consolation is the next time you nuts try to get this crap taught in schools, it'll be easy to show that it IS religion, not science.


It's been done. So creationists resort to more sneaky tactics. Trying to butcher science education or sneak their religious dogma through smoke screen word use etc.

Darn! I'm almost hyperventelating, I thought I'd seen madness before, but this stuff takes the cake!

Yup. Some crazy nutters in the world!

[Butters]

Sorry for the rants and name calling, I was really distressed. I am not familiar with this stuff, and trying to see how people can believe this maddness was really throwing me into fits. I really thought that there must be SOMETHING to creationism. But to find people that would rather believe an ancient book represents the actual true state of the universe instead of the empirical evidence is really new to me. Mayve being raised Catholic was a good thing. Catholics no longer deny reality in favor of their own interpretation of scripture. They don't deny what happened to Galileo, they actually learned from their mistake. The paper linked to about Galileo is typical of what I see creationists do, Give one little sound bite from an actuall record, then expound and expand it into a thesis that has no real meaning. Try this insteafd http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/astronomy/war.html

The War upon Galileo
On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last concentrated. His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before the world as a truth. Against him, then, the war was long and bitter. The supporters of what was called ``sound learning'' declared his discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy. Semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to curry favour with the Church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked him with perverted Scripture; theologians, inquisitors, congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him, and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine forever.
I shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as I can find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language, since the whole history was placed in a new light by the revelations of the trial documents in the Vatican Library, honestly published for the first time by L'Epinois in 1867, and since that by Gebler, Berti, Favaro, and others.

The first important attack on Galileo began in 1610, when he announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter. The enemy saw that this took the Copernican theory out of the realm of hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. They denounced both his method and its results as absurd and impious. As to his method, professors bred in the ``safe science'' favoured by the Church argued that the divinely appointed way of arriving at the truth in astronomy was by theological reasoning on texts of Scripture; and, as to his results, they insisted, first, that Aristotle knew nothing of these new revelations; and, next, that the Bible showed by all applicable types that there could be only seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven-branched candlestick of the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia; that from Galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive to Christian truth. Bishops and priests therefore warned their flocks, and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition to deal speedily and sharply with the heretic.

In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by showing them to the doubters through his telescope: they either declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the satellites as illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius declared that ``to see satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would create them.'' In vain did Galileo try to save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was ``worse than Luther or Calvin.''

The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua, by the declarations that ``the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they can not be moved,'' and that the sun ``runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other.''

But the little telescope of Galileo still swept the heavens, and another revelation was announced - the mountains and valleys in the moon. This brought on another attack. It was declared that this, and the statement that the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, directly contradict the statement in Genesis that the moon is ``a great light.'' To make the matter worse, a painter, placing the moon in a religious picture in its usual position beneath the feet of the Blessed Virgin, outlined on its surface mountains and valleys; this was denounced as a sacrilege logically resulting from the astronomer's heresy.

Still another struggle was aroused when the hated telescope revealed spots upon the sun, and their motion indicating the sun's rotation. Monsignor Elci, head of the University of Pisa, forbade the astronomer Castelli to mention these spots to his students. Father Busaeus, at the University of Innspruck, forbade the astronomer Scheiner, who had also discovered the spots and proposed a safe explanation of them, to allow the new discovery to be known there. At the College of Douay and the University of Louvain this discovery was expressly placed under the ban, and this became the general rule among the Catholic universities and colleges of Europe. The Spanish universities were especially intolerant of this and similar ideas, and up to a recent period their presentation was strictly forbidden in the most important university of all - that of Salamanca.

Such are the consequences of placing the instruction of men's minds in the hands of those mainly absorbed in saving men's souls. Nothing could be more in accordance with the idea recently put forth by sundry ecclesiastics, Catholic and Protestant, that the Church alone is empowered to promulgate scientific truth or direct university instruction. But science gained a victory here also. Observations of the solar spots were reported not only from Galileo in Italy, but from Fabricius in Holland. Father Scheiner then endeavoured to make the usual compromise between theology and science. He promulgated a pseudo-scientific theory, which only provoked derision.

The war became more and more bitter. The Dominican Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, ``Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?'' and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that ``geometry is of the devil,'' and that ``mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies.'' The Church authorities gave Caccini promotion.

Father Lorini proved that Galileo's doctrine was not only heretical but ``atheistic,'' and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The Bishop of Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system, publicly insulted Galileo, and denounced him to the Grand-Duke. The Archbishop of Pisa secretly sought to entrap Galileo and deliver him to the Inquisition at Rome. The Archbishop of Florence solenmnly condemned the new doctrines as unscriptural; and Paul V, while petting Galileo, and inviting him as the greatest astronomer of the world to visit Rome, was secretly moving the Archbishop of Pisa to pick up evidence against the astronomer.

But by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was Cardinal Bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. He was earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science conform to Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were purely theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about the earth. Their most tremendous dogmatic engine was the statement that ``his pretended discovery vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation.'' Father Lecazre declared ``it casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation.'' Others declared, ``It upsets the whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?'' Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks on Copernicus and his school.

In addition to this prodigious theological engine of war there was kept up a fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural extracts.

But the war grew still more bitter, and some weapons used in it are worth examining. They are very easily examined, for they are to be found on all the battlefields of science; but on that field they were used with more effect than on almost any other. These weapons are the epithets ``infidel'' and ``atheist.'' They have been used against almost every man who has ever done anything new for his fellow-men. The list of those who have been denounced as ``infidel'' and ``atheist'' includes almost all great men of science, general scholars, inventors, and philanthropists. The purest Christian life, the noblest Christian character, have not availed to shield combatants. Christians like Isaac Newton, Pascal, Locke, Milton, and even Fenelon and Howard, have had this weapon hurled against them. Of all proofs of the existence of a God, those of Descartes have been wrought most thoroughly into the minds of modern men; yet the Protestant theologians of Holland sought to bring him to torture and to death by the charge of atheism, and the Roman Catholic theologians of France thwarted him during his life and prevented any due honours to him after his death.

These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They are burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular prejudice, always obscuring the real question, sometimes destroying the attacking party. They are poisoned weapons. They pierce the hearts of loving women; they alienate dear children; they injure a man after life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best - fears for his eternal salvation, dread of the Divine wrath upon him. Of course, in these days these weapons, though often effective in vexing good men and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not infrequently injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo; they were then in all their sharpness and venom.

Yet a baser warfare was waged by the Archbishop of Pisa. This man, whose cathedral derives its most enduring fame from Galileo's deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and Fenelon and Cheverus. Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping the great astronomer.

Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written to his friend Castelli and to the Grand-Duchess Christine two letters to show that his discoveries might be reconciled with Scripture. On a hint from the Inquisition at Rome, the archbishop sought to get hold of these letters and exhibit them as proofs that Galileo had uttered heretical views of theology and of Scripture, and thus to bring him into the clutch of the Inquisition. The archbishop begs Castelli, therefore, to let him see the original letter in the handwriting of Galileo. Castelli declines. The archbishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing constantly and bitterly to the Inquisition against Galileo, professes to Castelli the greatest admiration of Galileo's genius and a sincere desire to know more of his discoveries. This not succeeding, the archbishop at last throws off the mask and resorts to open attack.

The whole struggle to crush Galileo and to save him would be amusing were it not so fraught with evil. There were intrigues and counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying; and in the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass of priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, appear two popes, Paul V and Urban VIII. It is most suggestive to see in this crisis of the Church, at the tomb of the prince of the apostles, on the eve of the greatest errors in Church policy the world has known, in all the intrigues and deliberations of these consecrated leaders of the Church, no more evidence of the guidance or presence of the Holy Spirit than in a caucus of New York politicians at Tammany Hall.

But the opposing powers were too strong. In 1615 Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and the mine which had been so long preparing was sprung. Sundry theologians of the Inquisition having been ordered to examine two propositions which had been extracted from Galileo's letters on the solar spots, solemnly considered these points during ahout a month and rendered their unanimous decision as follows: ``The first proposition, that the sun is the centre and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture''; and ``the second proposition, that the earth is not the centre but revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and, from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the true faith.''

The Pope himself, Paul V, now intervened again: he ordered that Galileo be brought before the Inquisition. Then the greatest man of science in that age was brought face to face with the greatest theologian - Galileo was confronted by Bellarmin. Bellarmin shows Galileo the error of his opinion and orders him to renounce it. De Lauda, fortified by a letter from the Pope, gives orders that the astronomer be placed in the dungeons of the Inquisition should he refuse to yield. Bellarmin now commands Galileo, ``in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole Congregation of the Holy Office, to relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing.'' This injunction Galileo acquiesces in and promises to obey.

This was on the 26th of February, 1616. About a fortnight later the Congregation of the Index, moved thereto, as the letters and documents now brought to light show, by Pope Paul, V solemnly rendered a decree that ``the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture''; and that this opinion must neither be taught nor advocated. The same decree condemned all writings of Copernicus and ``all writings which affirm the motion of the earth.'' The great work of Copernicus was interdicted until corrected in accordance with the views of the Inquisition; and the works of Galileo and Kepler, though not mentioned by name at that time, were included among those implicitly condemned as ``affirming the motion of the earth.''

The condemnations were inscribed upon the Index; and, finally, the papacy committed itself as an infallible judge and teacher to the world by prefixing to the Index the usual papal bull giving its monitions the most solemn papal sanction. To teach or even read the works denounced or passages condemned was to risk persecution in this world and damnation in the next. Science had apparently lost the decisive battle.

For a time after this judgment Galileo remained in Rome, apparently hoping to find some way out of this difficulty; but he soon discovered the hollowness of the protestations made to him by ecclesiastics, and, being recalled to Florence, remained in his hermitage near the city in silence, working steadily, indeed, but not publishing anything save by private letters to friends in various parts of Europe.

But at last a better vista seemed to open for him. Cardinal Barberini, who had seemed liberal and friendly, became pope under the name of Urban VIII. Galileo at this conceived new hopes, and allowed his continued allegiance to the Copernican system to be known. New troubles ensued. Galileo was induced to visit Rome again, and Pope Urban tried to cajole him into silence, personally taking the trouble to show him his errors by argument. Other opponents were less considerate, for works appeared attacking his ideas - works all the more unmanly, since their authors knew that Galileo was restrained by force from defending himself. Then, too, as if to accumulate proofs of the unfitness of the Church to take charge of advanced instruction, his salary as a professor at the University of Pisa was taken from him, and sapping and mining began. Just as the Archbishop of Pisa some years before had tried to betray him with honeyed words to the Inquisition, so now Father Grassi tried it, and, after various attempts to draw him out by flattery, suddenly denounced his scientific ideas as ``leading to a denial of the Real Presence in the Eucharist.''

For the final assault upon him a park of heavy artillery was at last wheeled into place. It may be seen on all the scientific battlefields. It consists of general denunciation; and in 1631 Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to bear upon Galileo with this declaration: ``The opinion of the earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is thrice sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves.'' From the other end of Europe came a powerful echo.

From the shadow of the Cathedral of Antwerp, the noted theologian Fromundus gave forth his famous treatise, the Ant-Aristarchius. Its very title-page was a contemptuous insult to the memory of Copernicus, since it paraded the assumption that the new truth was only an exploded theory of a pagan astronomer. Fromundus declares that ``sacred Scripture fights against the Copernicans.'' To prove that the sun revolves about the earth, he cites the passage in the Psalms which speaks of the sun ``which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber.'' To prove that the earth stands still, he quotes a passage from Ecclesiastes, ``The earth standeth fast forever.'' To show the utter futility of the Copernican theory, he declares that, if it were true, ``the wind would constantly blow from the east''; and that ``buildings and the earth itself would fly off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided with claws like cats to enable them to hold fast to the earth's surface.'' Greatest weapon of all, he works up, by the use of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, a demonstration from theology and science combined, that the earth must stand in the centre, and that the sun must revolve about it. Nor was it merely fanatics who opposed the truth revealed by Copernicus; such strong men as Jean Bodin, in France, and Sir Thomas Browne, in England, declared against it as evidently contrary to Holy Scripture.

I think I will hang around after all, this is to interesting, I haven't seen anything like this scine I met an astrologer, but your ideas here make her seem sane.

[Socratism]

Butters,

There are many books written by professional historians on the Galileo affair. This is where I prefer to get my information from.

If you examine carefully what I said you will see that everything I claimed is true.

I did not say that the Church was free of error; I only tried to explain how the controversy developed, and it did so over many years until its culmination with the "trial".

Socrates is correct that the error that many of the clergy made was in trying to use a few (3) unrelated verses in scripture to "prove" that Aristotle was correct and Galileo was wrong. In other words it was old science versus new science.

Galileo was a brilliant young lecturer at the university when he incurred the wrath of the Jesuit administration (the universities were typically run by the Church in those days) by publicly mocking a number of the teachings of Aristotle on the subject of science. Aristotle in those days was the equivalent of Einstein and Hawking today. The Jesuits fired him and thus began a lifelong battle. As the years passed Galileo became famous for his discoveries, but he was cocky as well as brilliant and loved to make fun of his enemies. Worse, he was always proven right.

At one point the Church tried to shut him up and stop the infighting by issuing an edict restricting Galileo's public inflammatory writings. By this time Galileo's former good friend had become Pope and was not amused by Galileo's antics.

The final straw came when Galileo published a large volume, in direct defiance of the earlier edict, in which he lampooned the position of his opponents with narrative of several people discussing the pros and cons of the geocentric position.

One of the cast of this lampoon, a stupid oaf, was widely believed to have been intended to be a caricature of the Pope.

The rest was predictable. The Pope was finally persuaded to let the Inquisitors question Galileo. He was never in any real danger it is believed for by this time he was quite famous and very popular throughout the world. But he was also old and frail and no longer the young upstart aching for a good fight. So he recanted and accepted house arrest at a castle of one of his chief supporters and spent the rest of his life receiving famous visitors from around the world, again amazing in direct defiance of the rules he had agreed to at the trial to NOT receive visitors and to shut up about his theory.

All of this is documented in books like "The Crime of Galileo", "The Life of Galileo", etc. written by professional historians available in any library. The forbidden caricature type book by Galileo, a huge tome, can also be found in any library.

The short summaries of the affair you usually find in textbooks, etc. generally fail to do justice to the many factors which led up to the trial and fail to mention that it was the Church that sponsored most of the people who kept science alive during the Middle Ages.

Actually one can make a better case than the Galileo one in other countries of the same time period where actual physical violence was done against opponents of the Aristotelian concept.

If any one wants to see the 3 verses used by Galileo's opponents I will be happy to oblige.

[Socratism]

Sorry for my lapse of memory: there were 4 verses.
1. In the heavens hath the Lord set a tabernacle for the sun. Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Rejoicing as a giant in running his course. His going forth is from the high heaven. And his circuit unto the ends of it. And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. Psalm 19:4-6

2. The Lord reineth. He is clothed with majesty and strength. The world also is established that it cannot be moved. Psalm 93:7

3. The sun rises and sets and returns to his own place. Ecclesiastes 1:5

4. ..."Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon". And the sun stood still and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Joshua 10:12-13

[Socrates]

Yes, one good place for Butters to start would be John Heilbron's book The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. He pointed out:

Galileo's heresy, according to the standard distinction used by the Holy Office, was "inquisitorial" rather than "theological".

Heilbron further showed that the Church, far from being anti-science, continued to be the main supporter of astronomy. As the title indicates, Church-supported astronomers used the cathedrals themselves as solar observatories. These meridiane were 'reverse sundials', or giant pinhole cameras where the sun's image was projected from a hole in a window in the cathedral's lantern onto a meridian line. Analyzing the sun's motion further weakened the Ptolemaic model, yet this research was well supported.

[Socrates]

Conversely, I DO understand why evolutionists should resort to such fact-free elephant hurling, turn a blind eye to the numerous fakes used to support evolution (Haeckel's embryo pics, Piltdown Man, Archaeoraptor, staged photos of peppered moths), ...

tgamble replied in his typically ignorant way:As already pointed out, the staged photographs of peppered moths ae not FAKES.I said STAGED. LISTEN next time :dufus: Haeckel's pics were FAKED. Archaeoraptor was exposed within months of it's discovery. Something creationist never mention. etc. etc. etc.A lie -- here is a mention from probably the premier creationist website: Archaeoraptor hoax update—National Geographic recants! (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4229news3-2-2000.asp). This was after claiming that it was "proof" of this claim:

We can now say that birds are theropods just as confidently as we say that humans are mammals.

[tgamble]

Archaeoraptor was exposed within months of it's discovery. Something creationist never mention. etc. etc. etc.

A lie -- here is a mention from probably the premier creationist website: Archaeoraptor hoax update—National Geographic recants!. This was after claiming that it was "proof" of this claim:


So if you know, why do you make such a big deal out of it?

When are creationists going to stop useing lies themselves? Oh right, lies is all they have! I guess never!

Archaeoraptor and other Chinese fossils, such as Sinosauropteryx, have been used as ‘proof’ of evolution and thus ‘disproof’ of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. We must remember that God’s Word never changes and must therefore be the basis for all our thinking rather than the fanciful, ever-changing findings of men.

This is the kind of anti intellectual, anti science idiocy that makes up the oxymoron creation "science"!

Indeed, the bible doesn't change. It was wrong then, it's still wrong and shall be wrong forever more. It's not God's word and it's certainlyh not inerreant!

Of course, AIG is being dishonest (again). The fossils were not used as proof for evolution, Evolution has already been proven. The fossils were used as additional evidence for dinosaur to bird evolution. That's all. BUT AIG wouldn't be so honest to tell you that!

[tgamble]

Today @ 03:15 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46930#post46930)
Socrates:

tgamble replied in his typically ignorant way:As already pointed out, the staged photographs of peppered moths ae not FAKES.I said STAGED. LISTEN next time :dufus: Haeckel's pics were FAKED.[list]

You listed the photographs in an list of alleged FAKES! DUH! :bonk:

[Woman]

I'm not sure what your point is, Socrates. You seem utterly indignant about incidents where unscupulous commercial traders in fossils and artifacts have lined their pockets by peddling fakes.

Socrates: :bonk:
Conversely, I DO understand why evolutionists should resort to such fact-free elephant hurling, turn a blind eye to the numerous fakes used to support evolution...(like) Archaeoraptor.
What Socrates fails to tell you is that it is SCIENCE that discovered and denounced the fake. To hear him tell it, SCIENCE was responsible for CREATING the fake! Well...

Thanks for the article reference, Soc, in which creationists were forced to admit grudgingly (this from Aig, the "premiere creationist site")
The latest ‘feathered dinosaur’ claim provokes even some evolutionists to use words like ‘total hoax’
Of course science wants no truck with such nonsense. The article goes on to quote scientists, actively involved in protecting the integrity of paleo research. Though the creationists would have you believe that the Chinese peasant who built the hoax is somehow part of an international conspiracy to further the cause of evolution at all costs. This is silly as the following clearly demonstrates.

Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing:
After observing a new feathered dromaeosaur specimen in a private collection and comparing it with the fossil known as Archaeoraptor, I have concluded that Archaeoraptor is a composite. The tail portions of the two fossils are identical, but other elements of the new specimen are very different from Archaeoraptor, in fact more closely resembling Sinornithosaurus.

The article continues:
As more evidence of altered fossils begins to surface, one must seriously question the integrity of the fossil industry and the stories these fossils are supposed to tell. A Feb. 19, 2000 New Scientist article sheds light on the growing problem of faked and altered fossils.
Referring to the Chinese fossil birds, paleontologist Kraig Derstler from the University of New Orleans in Louisiana says, "almost every one that I’ve seen on the commercial market has some reconstruction to make it look prettier."

The illegal yet highly profitable market of Chinese bird fossils has enticed the local farmers into creating marketable fossils, real or not. Derstler points out that "adhesives and fake rock have become very easy to make and very difficult to spot."

The paleontologist Luis Chiappe, of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, describes how one such specimen almost fooled him, till he noticed that one leg was longer than the other. ‘I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it,’ Chiappe said. Only close examination revealed that two slabs had been mortared together. "On the surface you really couldn’t see that."

Dr Larry Martin of the University of Kansas, who is a staunch critic of the dino-to-bird theory, commented, "I don’t trust any of these specimens until I see the X-rays." Joints and gaps in the reworked fossils are revealed with X-rays. Martin went on to say:

"The farmers do not believe this is wrong, they look at it as restoring an art object to make it more marketable. The whole commercial market for fossils has gotten riddled with fakery."

Not exactly conspiracy stuff is it?

Although the article wants you to think differently:
Archaeoraptor (the hoax) and other Chinese fossils, such as Sinosauropteryx (a legitimate prehistoric find), have been used as ‘proof’ of evolution and thus ‘disproof’ of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. We must remember that God’s Word never changes and must therefore be the basis for all our thinking rather than the fanciful, ever-changing findings of men.

Paranoia is a scary thing.

I wonder why evolutionists aren't running around screaming that there is evidence of artifacts coming from the Holy Land which have been tampered with and that obviously the creationists are just trying desperately to disprove evolution.

I'll tell you why. Because the fake holy artifact industry is as old as religion and scientists involved in biological research really don't care.

[Butters]

Indeed woman. It also seems clear that the piltdown man was never accepted by scientists, and was quickly dismissed. On the other hand, if creationists are really interested in the truth, why don't they make this Dr. Dino guy quit claiming that he found dinosaur and human footprints together?

[tgamble]

Today @ 10:17 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47304#post47304)
Butters:

Indeed woman. It also seems clear that the piltdown man was never accepted by scientists, and was quickly dismissed.

You're probably thinking of Nebraska man. Piltdown man took 40 years. Not because of some desperate coverup, it just took 40 years of other finds and suspicions to expose it. Learning from that mistake is perhaps what exposed the dino bird fraud so quickly, no matter how much Socrates likes to slander scientists by accusing them of turning a blind eye!

Nebraska Man (no matter how much creationists lie about it) was refuted after 5 years, was never considered a human ancestor by anyone but its discoverer and exposed by its discoverer. IT wasn't a fraud or anything, just a case of mistaken identity.

More telling than the frauds are the legitimate finds. Creationists can't agree if they're apes or humans. This, of course, is because they are transitional fossils.

On the other hand, if creationists are really interested in the truth, why don't they make this Dr. Dino guy quit claiming that he found dinosaur and human footprints together?

"Dr". Dino is an independent quack from the quacks at AIG and ICR. They can no more make him from telling such lies than you or I could.

[Butters]

I don’t know if this discussion should continue here, but I got to thinking about this Galileo question, and wanted to raise a couple of points.

I seems to me that it’s clear that Galileo was a jerk, and might have saved himself some trouble if he’d been diplomatic. But a few facts remain, first, from the web-site that Socrates provided.

“The Pope was also a danger to science, “ The Pope paralyzed scientific life in Italy”

That’s really enough for me, Religion should have no say in science. They can do science. The can support science. But they cannot allowed to dictate the nature of reality based solely on their interpretation of their Holy books. If the universe really was 6000 years old, scientists would be saying that. The beauty of science is that scientists are skeptical, and contrary to the claim that they are collabators, they love nothing better than proving their peers wrong, this is the nature of science. Any scientist would LOVE to find absolute proof that the earth was 6000 years old! It may or may not change his view of religion, but he would have his place in history.

From the Catholic church,
“Theologians were not prepared to entertain the heliocentric theory based on a layman’s interpretation. Yet Galileo insisted on moving the debate into a theological realm. There is little question that if Galileo had kept the discussion within the accepted boundaries of astronomy (i.e., predicting planetary motions) and had not claimed physical truth for the heliocentric theory, the issue would not have escalated to the point it did.”

How impudent! Claiming the heliocentric theory is true!

And I love this! Ah, the Catholic church, still the kings of spin!
“As more recent science has shown, both Galileo and his opponents were partly right and partly wrong. Galileo was right in asserting the mobility of the earth and wrong in asserting the immobility of the sun. His opponents were right in asserting the mobility of the sun and wrong in asserting the immobility of the earth.”
Except his opponents claimed the mobility of the sun was in an orbit around earth.


But, of course, this is all moot anyway,

Where does this leave the Church now? The head of the Vatican's recent commission, Cardinal Paul Poupard, probably put it best when he said "this subjective error of judgment, so clear to us today, led them to a disciplinary measure from which Galileo had much to suffer. These mistakes must be frankly recognized." J.A. Smith 1992

I mean, I can see that the story was distorted over time. (That’s why I never take any written history as “gospel”) But when you get down to the nitty gritty, Galileo was prosecuted for promoting a theory that the Catholic church disagreed with. Wether they believed that his theory went against scripture or wether it was just an excuse to get rid of a political advisory, really doesn’t matter. The fact that they were in a position to CLAIM that THEY could dictate what was true or not, based on their religion shows clearly why religion should not dictate science.
If you really believe creationism (God help me), then take heart, the great thing about science is that it’s self correcting, if it’s true, it will come out, on the other hand, if you promote religion in education and politics, watch what you pray for, you may get a Catholic teaching your children religion, right along with evolution!

[TheFiveSolas]

Since the title of this thread is "special creation evidence" I'll posit an evidence that cannot be rationally denied (hopefully you will see the obvious reason for this).

Without special creation you are rationally unable to account for human freedom of will, thought, or action.

I challenge any evolutionist/non-special creationist to provide a rational account of how it is even POSSIBLE for man's actions, will, or thought to be free IF the universe is solely physical matter/energy governed by physical laws.

Note: appeals to quantum indeterminancy won't work for the simple reason that a truly RANDOM (uncaused) event doesn't constitute a self-directed freely chosen action. In other words, it is merely an event that has NO cause (which obviously precludes human will/choice).

[DivineOb]

Today @ 06:45 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47627#post47627)
TheFiveSolas:

Since the title of this thread is "special creation evidence" I'll posit an evidence that cannot be rationally denied (hopefully you will see the obvious reason for this).

Without special creation you are rationally unable to account for human freedom of will, thought, or action.

I challenge any evolutionist/non-special creationist to provide a rational account of how it is even POSSIBLE for man's actions, will, or thought to be free IF the universe is solely physical matter/energy governed by physical laws.

Note: appeals to quantum indeterminancy won't work for the simple reason that a truly RANDOM (uncaused) event doesn't constitute a self-directed freely chosen action. In other words, it is merely an event that has NO cause (which obviously precludes human will/choice).

1) Do you have any evidence that humans actually have freedom of decision?
2) At best, this angle of argument can only prove the interaction of (at best) the god of deism, and does nothing to demonstrate that the christian god exists.

[Socrates]

Woman:I'm not sure what your point is, Socrates. You seem utterly indignant about incidents where unscupulous commercial traders in fossils and artifacts have lined their pockets by peddling fakes.What, do you think this practice is OK then?

Socrates:
Conversely, I DO understand why evolutionists should resort to such fact-free elephant hurling, turn a blind eye to the numerous fakes used to support evolution...(like) Archaeoraptor.

Woman:
What Socrates fails to tell you is that it is SCIENCE that discovered and denounced the fake.It took 40 years to expose the OBVIOUS fraud of Piltdown man. Yet Butterball ludicrously claims it was hardly ever accepted by scientists. To hear him tell it, SCIENCE was responsible for CREATING the fake!No, EVOLUTIONARY wishful thinking was. The goo-to-you theory has nothing to do with REAL science! It's amazing the the main pushers of evolution like Bubba, Butterball, Gamble and Woman are not qualified in science yet they pontificate on it all the time. Well...A widely publicised evolutionary journal pushed Archeoraptor as evidence for the dino-to-bird theory, and only grudginly recanted.
Thanks for the article reference, Soc, in which creationists were forced to admit grudgingly (this from AiG, the "premiere creationist site")
Yeah, even you approved of the Maintaining Creationist Integrity (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1011hovind.asp) article, which says something about the integrity of AiG AS A WHOLE!

“ The latest ‘feathered dinosaur’ claim provokes even some evolutionists to use words like ‘total hoax’
Of course science wants no truck with such nonsense. The article goes on to quote scientists, actively involved in protecting the integrity of paleo research. Though the creationists would have you believe that the Chinese peasant who built the hoax is somehow part of an international conspiracy to further the cause of evolution at all costs. This is silly as the following clearly demonstrates.Nonsense -- AiG never pushes conspiratorial theorising. But it DOES point out the biases of evolutionists, even though naive people like Butterball think evolutionists are the epitome of objectivity even when they explicitly make the atheistic connection clear.

Then Woman quotes from the AiG article (which shows that she is at least reading decent sources for a change, which is most commendable), and follows it with:Not exactly conspiracy stuff is it?And did they ever claim it did, despite Woman's own paranoia?

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 01:45 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47627#post47627)
TheFiveSolas:

Without special creation you are rationally unable to account for human freedom of will, thought, or action.

First you need to define what you mean by "freedom of will" and show that it even exists. Just so we're on the same page.

I challenge any evolutionist/non-special creationist to provide a rational account of how it is even POSSIBLE for man's actions, will, or thought to be free IF the universe is solely physical matter/energy governed by physical laws.

Note: appeals to quantum indeterminancy won't work for the simple reason that a truly RANDOM (uncaused) event doesn't constitute a self-directed freely chosen action. In other words, it is merely an event that has NO cause (which obviously precludes human will/choice).

If by "free" you mean "his own," then it is clear that humans can be self-directed in a purely-natural world. (Hint: humans are a collection of molecules. Thus whatever a person's molecules do, that's him doing it.)

[Socrates]

Rufie:First you need to define what you mean by "freedom of will" and show that it even exists. Just so we're on the same page.Did you choose to write this?If by "free" you mean "his own," then it is clear that humans can be self-directed in a purely-natural world. (Hint: humans are a collection of molecules. Thus whatever a person's molecules do, that's him doing it.)Yet another ipse dixit, but at least he's showing his true misotheistic bigoted materialism more honestly now. But then it's futile for RA to claim that his belief in materialistic evolution is more rational than mine in Biblical Creation. After all, if we are just collections of molecules, then the chemical laws that govern my molecules are just as infallible as the laws governing his.

[tgamble]

It took 40 years to expose the OBVIOUS fraud of Piltdown man.

Nothing obvious about it.

No, EVOLUTIONARY wishful thinking was.

Now you're a mind reader! LOL! Of a dead guy no less!

No, more likely the motivation was to get fame and fortune.

The goo-to-you theory has nothing to do with REAL science!

It also has nothing to do with evolution Liar.

A widely publicised evolutionary journal pushed Archeoraptor as evidence for the dino-to-bird theory, and only grudginly recanted.

More distortions and lies! NG is a popular scientific magazine. It's not an "evolutionary journal". Further, the retraction was anything but gruding.

Nonsense -- AiG never pushes conspiratorial theorising.

Rubbish. Their whole position is that the entire scientific community is wrong but is censoring them and persecuting creationists and all sorts of other paranoid drivel.

This thread is about special creation evidence, yet nobody has been able to come up with any!

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 06:43 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47663#post47663)
Socrates:

Rufie:

Socrates, the correct diminutive of my name is "Rufulus." You can't even get your flames right. :bonk:

Did you choose to write this?

Yes I did. So if choice is all that defines "free will," then I have demonstrated that it can exist without supernatural intervention.

Yet another ipse dixit,
If you want to challenge the fact that humans are a collection of molecultes, then I hope you got some empirical data to back yourself up.

but at least he's showing his true misotheistic bigoted materialism more honestly now.
Once again, Socrates, persists in this lie. I'll take this flame as a concession that I am right. Otherwise, you shouldn't feel the need to use an ad hominem argument.

But then it's futile for RA to claim that his belief in materialistic evolution is more rational than mine in Biblical Creation. After all, if we are just collections of molecules, then the chemical laws that govern my molecules are just as infallible as the laws governing his.

:hrm: We're discussing choice here not knowledge. Please don't forget the subject.

[AdvocatDiaboli]

Hello folks!

My first post.

Why hasn't anyone answered the important question from the first post?
Where is the evidence _for_ creation?

[TheFiveSolas]

Advocat,
I did, would you like to rebut it? If so, offer a rational, scientific explanation of human freedom of will, thought, or action given the non-Christian, evolutionary worldview.

Note: A purely physical universe, governed solely by the laws of physics and chemistry, RULES out even the possibility of freedom of any kind. So much for any claim, by evolutionists, that they arrived at their view because they are "free" thinkers.

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 04:04 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47985#post47985)
TheFiveSolas:

Advocat,
I did, would you like to rebut it? If so, offer a rational, scientific explanation of human freedom of will, thought, or action given the non-Christian, evolutionary worldview.

First define what you mean by "freedom of will." I have and idea of what I mean when I say it, however, we might differ so I'd like you to lay out what you mean by it and show that it even exists.

Note: A purely physical universe, governed solely by the laws of physics and chemistry, RULES out even the possibility of freedom of any kind. So much for any claim, by evolutionists, that they arrived at their view because they are "free" thinkers.

Obviously not true, since a purely physical universe, offers freedom from supernatural manipulation.

[TheFiveSolas]

Rufus wrote:

Obviously not true, since a purely physical universe, offers freedom from supernatural manipulation.


Equivocation of terms. Freedom OF action/thought/will is categorically different from freedom FROM something. One involves ability, the other separation.

In addition, the point I was making was one of personal freedom of choice, thought, will, or action (as I stated). In a completely physical universe, there exists NO freedom, only fixed physical and chemical reactions.

With regards to how I'm using the terms "freedom of will, thought, or action" I'll simply start with this:
The active ability of a person to choose/will how to think or act as opposed to being completely passive. In other words, am I merely a biochemical machine that passively is acted upon by my physical makeup coupled with external (physical) stimuli OR is there some form of self-determination that transcends the physical laws of the universe?

[AdvocatDiaboli]

Today @ 09:04 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47985#post47985)
TheFiveSolas:

Advocat,
I did, would you like to rebut it?

Do you mean this:
"Without special creation you are rationally unable to account for human freedom of will, thought, or action."

Interesting. How do you know that freedom of will, thought and actions come from special creation?

I challenge any evolutionist/non-special creationist to provide a rational account of how it is even POSSIBLE for man's actions, will, or thought to be free IF the universe is solely physical matter/energy governed by physical laws.

So, If one can't explain phenomenom A without "God did it", then "God did it" is a valid explanation?

If so, offer a rational, scientific explanation of human freedom of will, thought, or action given the non-Christian, evolutionary worldview.

I could always say that freedom of will is an illusion, just like time. But I won't...

Another question: How did God create everything?

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 05:02 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=48005#post48005)
TheFiveSolas:

Equivocation of terms. Freedom OF action/thought/will is categorically different from freedom FROM something. One involves ability, the other separation.

Need I remind you of your own words: "A purely physical universe . . . RULES out even the possibility of freedom of any kind" (empasis mine)? I've pointed out that this statement is obviously false. If a purely physical universe allows freedom from supernatural manipulation, then it clearly does not rule of the possibility of freedom of any kind.

In addition, the point I was making was one of personal freedom of choice, thought, will, or action (as I stated). In a completely physical universe, there exists NO freedom, only fixed physical and chemical reactions.

Since when are physical and chemical reactions "fixed?"

With regards to how I'm using the terms "freedom of will, thought, or action" I'll simply start with this:
The active ability of a person to choose/will how to think or act as opposed to being completely passive.

Then this can easily occur in a physical world as long as people are also physical beings. Since people are physical beings . . . .

In other words, am I merely a biochemical machine that passively is acted upon by my physical makeup coupled with external (physical) stimuli OR is there some form of self-determination that transcends the physical laws of the universe?

False dichotomy since "self-determination" does not have to transcend physical laws.

[TheFiveSolas]

Advocat asked:

Do you mean this:
"Without special creation you are rationally unable to account for human freedom of will, thought, or action."


Yes.

Freedom of will, thought, and action are not qualities of atoms/molecules. Therefore, if you want to be able to affirm human freedom, you will need a rational explanation as to how this ability (which transcends the physical realm) can exist.

You will also need an epistemological foundation for KNOWING that it exists (i.e., is real).

Christians have a metaphysical foundation for human abilities that transcend the physical AND we have an epistemological foundation for knowing this to be the case (i.e, God's revelation in Scripture).

You continued:

So, If one can't explain phenomenom A without "God did it", then "God did it" is a valid explanation?


No, that isn't my argument. That would be an argument from ignorance, which is a non sequitur.

My argument is that freedom is antithetical to a strictly materialistic view of the universe. Therefore, if you want to affirm human freedom in a physical world, then you need to account for such things that transcend the physical. In other words, I'm pointing out that freedom of will, action, or thought doesn't comport with a view that affirms the ultimacy of physical laws.

The problem is one that strict materialists cannot overcome. The reason cannot be due to ignorance, as you implied, but rather due to the nature of the universe that you assume. Atoms act and react according to their inherent physical properties of size, shape, mass, electron charge, etc., and nothing more. Therefore, in such a universe (one that is solely matter/energy which is governed by the laws of physics and chemistry), freedom CANNOT exist. It is precluded.

Merely asserting that you can't "explain the phenomenon" doesn't help, the phenomenon of free will, choice, or thought can't exist in such a universe.

Therefore, the question is not how can you explain human freedom (since strict materialism can't). Rather, its how can you rationally account for its existence with a view of reality that at core precludes it? Basically, I'm showing that your conception of reality reduces itself to absurdity since it RULES OUT one of the core preconditions of intelligibility, namely our ability to freely choose how and what to think.

[TheFiveSolas]

Rufus wrote:

Need I remind you of your own words: "A purely physical universe . . . RULES out even the possibility of freedom of any kind" (empasis mine)? I've pointed out that this statement is obviously false. If a purely physical universe allows freedom from supernatural manipulation, then it clearly does not rule of the possibility of freedom of any kind.


I pointed out the sense in which I was using the term (i.e, human ability to be active in choosing how to act, think, or will something). If you wish to equivocate on the term you will not be refuting my assertion but a straw man version of it. My point still stands, freedom (in the sense of ability) of any kind, is ruled out.

You continued:

Since when are physical and chemical reactions "fixed?"


As I've pointed out elsewhere, atoms/molecules act/react according to their inherent physical properties of size, shape, mass, electron charge, etc. Therefore, their reactions in a given situation are fixed, being completely dictated by their inherent physical properties.

Do you really mean to imply that atoms/molecules don't act/react SOLELY due to their physical qualities?

I had written:

With regards to how I'm using the terms "freedom of will, thought, or action" I'll simply start with this:
The active ability of a person to choose/will how to think or act as opposed to being completely passive.


You responded by stating:

Then this can easily occur in a physical world as long as people are also physical beings. Since people are physical beings . . . .


I'm sorry, but exactly how did this rebut my criticism that, according to your view of the world, we cannot be active in choosing how to act or think, but would be completely passive (i.e., being acted upon, with no ability to change or will to act/think any differently than what our neural network "spits out")?

I had asked:

In other words, am I merely a biochemical machine that passively is acted upon by my physical makeup coupled with external (physical) stimuli OR is there some form of self-determination that transcends the physical laws of the universe?


Your response:

False dichotomy since "self-determination" does not have to transcend physical laws.


Self determination does not have to transcend physical laws? Does water determine for itself what temperature it will freeze (at 1 atmospheric pressure)? Does a neuron determine for itself which pathway it will fire down (thus determining what our brains will think)? No, neither have the ability of self-determination, nor do ANY purely physical object.

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 06:01 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=48029#post48029)
TheFiveSolas:

I pointed out the sense in which I was using the term (i.e, human ability to be active in choosing how to act, think, or will something). If you wish to equivocate on the term you will not be refuting my assertion but a straw man version of it. My point still stands, freedom (in the sense of ability) of any kind, is ruled out.

So when you said freedom in any sense you didn't mean in any sense? But nevertheless, supernatural manipulation is one such thing that could prevent us from having freedom of will; is it not? Therefore, a purely physical universe does allow us that freedom.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, atoms/molecules act/react according to their inherent physical properties of size, shape, mass, electron charge, etc. Therefore, their reactions in a given situation are fixed, being completely dictated by their inherent physical properties.

Do you really mean to imply that atoms/molecules don't act/react SOLELY due to their physical qualities?


Being governed by physical properties is not the same as being fixed. Chemical reactions are a stocastic process, not a deterministic one.

I'm sorry, but exactly how did this rebut my criticism that, according to your view of the world, we cannot be active in choosing how to act or think, but would be completely passive (i.e., being acted upon, with no ability to change or will to act/think any differently than what our neural network "spits out")?

That critisim is only valid if we are not our physical bodies. However, you haven't offered any evidence that that is true.

Self determination does not have to transcend physical laws? Does water determine for itself what temperature it will freeze at 1 atmospheric pressure)? Does a neuron determine for itself which pathway it will fire down (thus determining what our brains will think)? No, neither have the ability of self-determination, nor do ANY purely physical object.

Talk about an equivocation! Physical properties != actions. You're going to need to do better than that if you want to show that no purely physical object can choose it's own actions.

[Woman]

Solas:
With regards to how I'm using the terms "freedom of will, thought, or action" I'll simply start with this:
The active ability of a person to choose/will how to think or act as opposed to being completely passive. In other words, am I merely a biochemical machine that passively is acted upon by my physical makeup coupled with external (physical) stimuli OR is there some form of self-determination that transcends the physical laws of the universe?

I know that you believe you are stating a simple truth which is obvious to you and ought, therefore, to be obvious to anyone else. But the problem is you aren't being consistant with your terms or definite in their meanings. You've offered several descriptions of "free will" or "freedom of will" (which is clumsy) but they keep changing just a little. One issue I believe is causing trouble is that you are not quite certain exactly what you mean by "physical" or "materialistic."

1. Do you believe that "physical" excludes mental and emotional?

2. Are you under the impresseion that only beings endowed with "metaphysical foundations" or origins can make choices regarding their lives?

Solas:
Christians have a metaphysical foundation for human abilities that transcend the physical AND we have an epistemological foundation for knowing this to be the case (i.e, God's revelation in Scripture).

(For the time being I'll ignore your suggestions that only Christians have this.)

Solas:
My argument is that freedom is antithetical to a strictly materialistic view of the universe. Therefore, if you want to affirm human freedom in a physical world, then you need to account for such things that transcend the physical. In other words, I'm pointing out that freedom of will, action, or thought doesn't comport with a view that affirms the ultimacy of physical laws.

Basically, I'm showing that your conception of reality reduces itself to absurdity since it RULES OUT one of the core preconditions of intelligibility, namely our ability to freely choose how and what to think.

Here again, you are restating your belief but that doesn't equate with making an argument. Let's sort out the terms and definitions first. Bringing in new, undefined terms does not make your argument stronger only more confusing. "conception of reality"

Solas
Does water determine for itself what temperature it will freeze at 1 atmospheric pressure)?

Of course not, it has no mechanism for thinking. On the other hand you don't detremine for yourself what temperature you will freeze at either.

Solas:
Does a neuron determine for itself which pathway it will fire down (thus determining what our brains will think)?

A neuron does not "think." Brains think. And they do it based on a vast combination of individual experience, ability, knowlege, including memory and emotion. Surely you are not saying that without God giving us an ability to transcend the physical humans would all be the same, like robots?

Solas:
No, neither have the ability of self-determination, nor do ANY purely physical object.

Here again, we need to define what a purely "physical object" is.

[Socrates]

RA as usual is pretends he is an expert on everything, even when it impinged on fields in which I am qualified and he isn't:
Being governed by physical properties is not the same as being fixed. Chemical reactions are a stocastic process, not a deterministic one.This is true at the level of molecules, but at the level of large numbers of them, the reactions are pretty well determined. Mix two chemicals together and you can be sure of the quantities and types of products very repeatably. Even in the amounts of chemicals involved in neurons, there is a predictability and repeatability.

[Socrates]

Socrates:
Rufie:

Then Rufie responds:Socrates, the correct diminutive of my name is "Rufulus." You can't even get your flames right. That's in Latin -- this board is English. Common parlance is moving away from Latin plurals in many cases too.

Soc:Did you choose to write this?

RA:
Yes I did. So if choice is all that defines "free will," then I have demonstrated that it can exist without supernatural intervention.The debate was whether evolution can explain genuine free will, and you questioned its existence.[list]If you want to challenge the fact that humans are a collection of molecultes, then I hope you got some empirical data to back yourself up.You made the implication that humans are JUST a collection of molecules, so YOU back it up.

“ but at least he's showing his true misotheistic bigoted materialism more honestly now. ”


Once again, Socrates, persists in this lie. I'll take this flame as a concession that I am right. Otherwise, you shouldn't feel the need to use an ad hominem argument. It was a reasonable circumstantial ad hominem, and you have proven the truth of this many times.

Soc:
But then it's futile for RA to claim that his belief in materialistic evolution is more rational than mine in Biblical Creation. After all, if we are just collections of molecules, then the chemical laws that govern my molecules are just as infallible as the laws governing his.We're discussing choice here not knowledge. Please don't forget the subject.I'm not, but they are related. RA still hasn't explained why any choice should be "better" than another under his materialistic scheme.

[QED]

Is there no law against amateur philosophy? There should be.

[TheFiveSolas]

Soc:“ Did you choose to write this? ”


RA:
Yes I did.


If your brain activity is solely a function of neurons firing down pathways, then it follows that you didn't choose to do anything. You were completely passive, acting only according to your genetic makeup coupled with environmental factors (i.e., Socrates asking a question).

Again, neither molecules nor the atoms that constitute them make choices as to how they will act/react. Their actions/reactions are a product of their inherent physical properties of size, shape, mass, electron charge, etc.

[QED]

If your brain activity is solely a function of neurons firing down pathways, then it follows that you didn't choose to do anything. You were completely passive, acting only according to your genetic makeup coupled with environmental factors

Ok, if there really is no law against amateur philosophy, then I might as well indulge myself until that oversight is corrected. Solas - under a philosophically materialist view, who is the "you" in this statement, if not the material person, complete with neurons firing down pathways, genetic makeup and environmental factors?

[TheFiveSolas]

QED,
I hope you aren't operating under the assumption that I'm defending the view of strict materialism. I'm fully aware of the problem you've pointed out and how it is one that stands against such a view.

As a matter of fact in another thread I've pointed out what you just did. Namely, that a view of strict materialism (a reductionistic and atomistic view) cannot rationally account for any unifying principle, in your example, the "person" or "you" that unifies the matter that we are made of.

In this thread I purposefully chose to deal ONLY with the issue of freedom of action, thought, and will, which I've proven would be precluded if the strict materialist worldview were true. Showing how strict materialism rules out freedom was a simple way of illustrating the absurdity of such a worldview.

Of course, if you would like to expand on my "oversight", please provide a rational (and purely materialistic) account of what it is that unifies all of the neurons firing at once.

Christianity can rationally account for this metaphysical view of reality (one that resolves the problem of the one and the many) AND we have an epistemological foundation for knowing that this view of reality is true.

My question is how can a strict materialist rationally account for such a view of man?

[Socrates]

QED:Is there no law against amateur philosophy? There should be.Then QED would be locked up.

[QED]

Namely, that a view of strict materialism (a reductionistic and atomistic view) cannot rationally account for any unifying principle, in your example, the "person" or "you" that unifies the matter that we are made of.

I'm not sure that it has to per se. "You" (or "I") is an experiential unit, that seems to correspond, materialistically, to the sum of the "neurons firing down pathways, genetic makeup and environmental history".

The attempt to show that materialism makes effective choice impossible because it reduces the cause of that choice to deterministic processes such as neuronal activity and genetic and environmental background is tantamount to showing that choice is impossible because it reduces to "you" or "I" as a cause.

Such an exercise obviates a construct like "free will", and leaves "personal responsibility" entirely within the realm of subjective experience - where it also rests under any current supernaturalistic metaphysics, until some unique, objective, and consistent methodology is discovered for demonstrating the existence and action of the personal soul.

IOW, under certain supernaturalist views, free will is a valid, but unidentifiable condition. Under Christianity, one has the epistemological foundation to know that free will exists, but still lacks the methodology to decide when it is in operation and when it is not, leaving us no useful knowledge about such helpful constructs as personal responsibility - which must still be established based on personal subjectivity.


Under strict materialism, free will is a trivial, and its absence leaves us with no useful knowledge about such helpful constructs as personal responsibility - which must still be established based on personal subjectivity.

And now, if there is any justice, the amateur philosophy police will come and lock us all up, you, me, Rufus, and Socrates. I hope we have private cells!

[RufusAtticus]

Yesterday @ 03:41 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=48399#post48399)
Socrates:

RA as usual is pretends he is an expert on everything, even when it impinged on fields in which I am qualified and he isn't:

And you know I'm not qualified how? Oh you don't because you have absolutely no clue about my education back ground except for the fact that I'm a PhD student in Populations Genetics.

This is true at the level of molecules, but at the level of large numbers of them, the reactions are pretty well determined. Mix two chemicals together and you can be sure of the quantities and types of products very repeatably. Even in the amounts of chemicals involved in neurons, there is a predictability and repeatability.

Ever hear of the Law of Strong Numbers (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WeakLawofLargeNumbers.html)?

[RufusAtticus]

Yesterday @ 03:50 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=48404#post48404)
Socrates:

That's in Latin -- this board is English. Common parlance is moving away from Latin plurals in many cases too.

Apparently you missed the fact that my name is a Latin name.

The debate was whether evolution can explain genuine free will, and you questioned its existence.

No, I question the existance of what Solas calls "free will." That's because logically the thing he calls "free will" can only a problem if it actually exists. Thus before he can argue that it is a problem, he has to give a rigorous defination of it, show that it exists, and show how evolution can't explain it.

You made the implication that humans are JUST a collection of molecules, so YOU back it up.

Despite all the scientific investigation to date, people have yet to find anything other than molecules (or more correctly matter) making us up. Solas's argument requires that he shows that some supernatural thing defines who we are. Thus the task of support is his.

It was a reasonable circumstantial ad hominem, and you have proven the truth of this many times.

No you have asserted the truth of it many times. But amazingly none of the Christians who know me personally, think I'm a "misotheist bigot," including a few members of the clergy, but then again such thoughts cause you to question the veracity of their faith; does it not?

I'm not, but they are related. RA still hasn't explained why any choice should be "better" than another under his materialistic scheme.

By their fruits you shall know them.

[RufusAtticus]

Yesterday @ 09:18 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=48917#post48917)
TheFiveSolas:

If your brain activity is solely a function of neurons firing down pathways, then it follows that you didn't choose to do anything. You were completely passive, acting only according to your genetic makeup coupled with environmental factors (i.e., Socrates asking a question).

That is only a viable criticism if "I" am not my neurons.