RufusAtticus

This is the smartest thing I've ever heard a creationist say. Good for you. If you have any questions about the material you are reading, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm a graduate student in Evolutionary Biology, and I can probably answer your questions. (I'd also like to sharpen by skills for when I teeaye next year.) You can find my email in my profile.

-RvFvS

BLoggins02

LinuxPup: I don't think you'll be flamed for being a creationist. You WILL be flamed if you:

1) Hit and run post (you've posted before, so I doubt this is likely)

2) Rehash old arguments that have been refuted or addressed time and again, without adding new insight (i.e. Evolution Violates The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics). However, if you want to share something new and insightful we are all ears.

3) Fail to respond to request for references, elaboration, or recant of an argument soundly refuted.

4) Concede victory (or defeat) by proclaiming "Jesus loves me anyway", "I will pray for you", "Yet, here we are", "We were not meant to ask such questions", or my personal favorite "God works in mysterious ways"

IMO, flaiming a Creationist for being a Creationist is not consistent with the goals of this forum and not consistent with tolerance.

Now, on the RR&P board, you're on your own

CodeMason

Old earth creationism is somewhat odd. In the usual interpretation of it, it means that every so often God jumped in, wiped out a certain population, and replaced them with something a little different. This makes no sense to me at all. Others believe that God created all species at once, some just died out along the way. But this is utterly irreconcilable with the fossil record.

Valentine Pontifex

Maybe we will have to take turns acting like them. I will start.

<creationist type="yec"><liar type="habitual">

You know those evilutionist astronomers have proof that the universe is young and just will not admit it. Clark & Caswell refer to "The mystery of the missing supernova remnants" and by this refer to that fact that there are only enough supernova remnants observed to date it
to a few thousand years. If the universe was billions of years old we would see many more supernova remnants than we actually do.
Cox says that this has "caused considerable surprise and loss of confidence" in evilutionist astronomer's theories and yet they don't mention it in the textbooks. Why? Because it would mean admitting they have no evidence, but that the creationists do.

</liar></creationist>

In case anyone is interested, the word "mystery" is followed by "is also solved" in the original. The Talk.Origins Archive will have a detailed FAQ on this matter in the near future.

CodeMason

<creationist>
Evolution is nothing more than blind chance! It is order from disorder, and it doesn't happen because I've never seen my cat evolve into a tortoise.
</creationist>

Kosh

he he. This could be fun. And in XML even!

<creationist type="yec">
<argument type="invalid">
Them danged evo's want us to believe we evolved
from inorganic matter, just rocks!. That ain't so, 'cuz the
Bible tells me:
the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and
the man became a living being.
the LORD God formed the man[5] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and
the man became a living being.
Genisis 2:7
</argument>
</creationist>

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by CodeMason:
<strong>I've never seen my cat evolve into a tortoise.
</strong>

I did. But she was possessed by the Devil at the time, so I knew what was really behind "evolution".

BLoggins02

XML, yum Ya know, I've thought about using XML and XSLT to derive theorems of arbitrary formal axiomatic systems...

... of course I've also thought about torturing myself with the blood of a skinned cat, but then I decided against it

Edited to say:

If you need further proof that I am really sadistic, you should go <a href="http://bloggins02.dyndns.org" target="_blank">here</a> (but not all at once, my poor cable modem and P133 Linux box can't take it <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: BLoggins02 ]</p>

LinuxPup

I guess just to see where I'm comming from, I believe God created the universe about 14 billion +/- 0.5 billion years ago. The earth formed together and had a shroud of debris and whatnot from asteroid bombardment, volcanoes, etc. The frame of reference in Genesis 1 is given in verse 2, that is, the surface of the earth. When God said "Let there be light", this wasn't the creation of light, as the Hebrew word "hayah" is used, and is never used to denote creation. The first day of creation was when the atmosphere went from opaque to transclucent... allowing light to appear, but not allowing the viewer to see outside of the planet's atmosphere. In the second day, God set an expanse between the waters above and below. I do not accept the "canopy theory", as it's not biblically sound, and lacks any physical evidence. I believe the 2nd creation day is the establishment of a stable water cycle. The waters above are clouds, and the ones below are the ocean. The third day land appeared, and plants grew. The 4th day the atmosphere went from translucent, to transparent, allowing the viewer on the surface of the earth to finally see the sun and moon... Many believe that the Bible claims the sun and moon were actually created on the 4th day, but this isn't necessarily the case. The 5th day God created sea animals and birds, and on the 6th day God created more animals, and finally man. It is important that one remember also that Genesis 1 never claims to be a complete account of creation, but merely an adequate one (e.g. insects and bacteria are never mentioned). So anyways, I'm a creationist, and here goes...

scigirl

LinusPup,

Thank you for sharing your beliefs. I have a couple of questions and comments.

First of all, you believe that the Bible was divinely inspired, correct? That is, God was talking to the authors at the time of writing it, right?

So when you make statements such as
are you being divinely inspired to make these additions and subtractions?
No, LinuxPup, it is completely inaccurate, and inadequate. Read
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2c.html#conc" target="_blank">talkorigins</a> analysis of "old earth creationism:"

[quote]From Talk Origins:
Separately created kinds", but with an old Earth.

Literal creationism won't fly, but could the concept of "separately created kinds" still be viable, with the creations occurring over millions of years? This would require the following convoluted adjustments:

First, if every "kind", (species, genus, family, whatever) was separately created, there must have been innumerable successive and often simultaneous waves of creation, occurring across several hundred million years, including thousands of creations of now- extinct groups.
(Scigirl's note--Genesis one says nothing about more than one creation)

Second, these thousands of "kinds" were created in a strictly correlated chronological/morphological sequence, in a nested hierarchy. That is, virtually no "kind" was created until a similar "kind" already existed. For instance, for the reptile-to-mammal transition, God must have created at least 30 genera in nearly perfect morphological order, with the most reptilian first and the most mammalian last, and with only relatively slight morphological differences separating each successive genus. Similarly, God created legged whales before he created legless whales, and Archeopteryx before creating modern birds. [...]And so on.
Scigirl's note: In order to believe in old-earth creationism, you have to accept the evolutionary model anyway for at least the "order" God made life.

Third, God did not create these kinds in a sequence that obviously progressed in any direction, as discussed briefly under model 3. This is not necessarily a fatal flaw (mysterious are the ways of God, right?), but it is another puzzle, another unexplained aspect of the fossil record.

Fourth, what about those species-to-species transitions? They appear to show that at least some species, genera, and families arose by evolution (not necessarily all, but at least some.) How can a creationist model be reconciled with this evidence?

In summary[...]Model 4 (literal young-earth creationism) appears unsalvagable, as all of its predictions are wrong. Model 5 (nonliteral creationism, with separately created kinds on an old earth) can just barely be modified to be consistent with the fossil record, but only with bizarre and convoluted tinkering, and only, apparently, if God created the world to make it look like evolution happened. In my humble opinion, this still utterly fails to explain the record's notable features or to make any useful or testable predictions. It also raises the disturbing question of why God would go to such lengths to set up the appearance of evolution, right down to inserting the correct ratios of radioisotopes in the rocks.

Scigirl

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>