Charles Darwin

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No explanatory value for creationism? Well it explains why evolution fares so poorly; and it explains the source of consciousness. Furthermore, as with scientific theories creationism cannot be proved true, but it can be falsified.
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Good points. Creationism doesn't explain why evolution fares poorly; my mistake. Same for consciousness. My point should be that consciousness is a problem for materialism, but not for creationism.

Creationism can be falsified by formulating a compelling theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin

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You see, what I'm pointing out is how poorly materialism accords with our experience and knowledge. Our sense of good and evil; consciousness; our sense of free will; and so forth. Materialism is left with, as with evolution, the explanation that these non material things just arose by themselves.
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Can you show me where the laws of logic are? Of course not, they are not material. A ~= ~A. Do you believe that is a law of logic?

Have you ever felt that something/one is evil? You know it is evil. Or likewise, that something is right and good? But that is a non material attribute.

With materialism there is no such thing as good or evil; merely matter and energy interacting in our heads, forming phantasms of such notions, but they are really nothing more than molecules interacting. Therefore, with materialism, we must deny what is so plainly obvious to us. What is plainly evil or good to us; we must deny and say there is no such thing.

The same for things such as truth, free will, etc. These are plainly obvious to us, but we must deny them. I call the laws of logic, evil, good, free will, etc. non material things. Do you disagree? Then we must be deluded. And then why do you argue you are right and I am wrong? How can we establish that evolution is true, or anything else for that matter? You have no basis for truth, yet you argue for it.

Albion

Yes, I know you keep saying that; it's just that it seems awfully subjective. To the vast majority of researchers in the field, the current theory of evolution IS compelling. That's why it's the current theory, not the former theory. I think we're all aware that there are some varieties of creationists (not including yourself, I gather) for whom a theory that contradicts their version of the Genesis story in the Bible is never going to be compelling, regardless of the scientific evidence. They need it not to be true for reasons totally unrelated to science, so they grasp the "scientific" refutations available at the creationist ministry websites and insist that they have scientific objections. No amount of data or anything else scientific will make any difference to them; the current theory of evolution will never be compelling (nor will any other theories unless they accord with the Genesis story), and thye'll swear blind (and probably even believe) that their objections are scientific. There's no way anybody could formulate a theory that would be compelling to them. There are people in the ID field who have tied methodological naturalism so tightly to philosophical naturalism, and have tied the latter rather tightly to all the ills of society, that a theory of human origins that doesn't involve God is unacceptable for reasons that don't necessarily have a lot to do with science but are more important to them than science. A naturalistic theory is never going to be compelling to those people because it has too much societal and cultural baggage attached as far as they're concerned - but again, in order to get their version of evolution accepted, they'll insist that their objections are purely scientific. There's no way that the current theory or any other theory that's naturalistic is going to compel these groups, because it's the naturalism that they object to. So are we going to have to say that creationism wins by default because the faithful will never be compelled? Or where do we draw the line in terms of who "compelling" refers to?

Again, as I said earlier, I thought that theories were supposed to be supported or falsified on the basis of their ability to explain the available data, not by direct competition with another theory. Creationism can't really compete directly with the current theory of evolution anyway, because they have different points of origin - methodological naturalism and "God created but we can't necessarily understand how he did so" don't come close to comparing like with like.

markfiend

Fer &^$&*% sake Charles, NO! I claimed that common descent predicts a nested heirarchy. You even put the $&^@�ing quote up on your post!

This is only one example of your deliberate twisting of what I and others on this thread say. I will withdraw from this thread (for now; I may be back) until I can regain my temper. I do not wish to give moderators cause to censure me.

monkenstick

compelling to whom?
compelling to you?

how about compelling to the vast majority of biologists around the world?

lpetrich

While raising the bar of compellingness much higher for evolution than for creationism.

lpetrich

So there is some special stuff that these things are composed of?

Except that there are lots of "nonmaterial" things, like waves, that nobody considers composed of some special stuff. Are waves composed of wave-stuff?

Jack the Bodiless

This is the same fallacy I described earlier. You are failing to address the FACT that these factors DID NOT erase the hirearchy.

It's certainly a very curious fallacy: one I've not seen before. I doubt that it has a formal name. "Yes, your honour, I am aware that my client dropped his gun while fleeing from the murder scene, and that the gun was registered in his name and bore his fingerprints. But, you see, he might not have dropped it: and, if he'd held on to it instead, the prosecution would have no case against my client. Therefore the evidence is inadmissible, because it might not have existed".

Of course, it's also extremely unlikely that these factors could erase the hirearchy anyhow. Multiple abiogenesis events would result in different strains of unrelated microbes. And even if we assume that multiple strains evolved multicellular organisms, we would merely have a few distinct nested hirearchies rather than one: it would be rather obvious which hirearchy each organism belonged to, just as we have no problem recognising the difference between a bird and an insect today.

Nor can "a high rate of evolution" be invoked. Whenever this occurs (e.g. after a mass extinction), it is from pre-existing organisms. This has certainly been true of every such event since the Cambrian Explosion: new phyla don't suddenly appear after mass-extinctions, and indeed they cannot. Complex organisms don't "poof" into existence.
Again, you have no understanding of how the scientific method operates. "Falsification" is a scientific term: if you're attempting to discuss science with us, then you need to learn scientific terminology and methods.

In science, a theory cannot be "falsified" merely by presenting a rival theory. "Falsification" refers to the process of testing a theory "to destruction" and coming up with evidence incompatible with the theory. Scientists must then modify or discard the theory.

You have failed to describe any hypothetical test of creationism: a test which could potentially prove that it is false.

...Whereas common descent would have to be discarded if organisms didn't fit into a nested hirearchy (or perhaps two or three, assuming your highly implausible "multicellular organisms from multiple abiogenesis events" scenario had actually occurred), or if the order of their appearance in the fossil record didn't correlate at all with the hirearchy derived from their physical characteristics, or if DNA analysis didn't show the same pattern. It is the close correlation of these hirearchies which makes common descent just about the surest bet in science.
How is "it became lost because it wasn't fixed" incompatible with what I said?

Evidence that this scenario won't work?
Nope, we don't yet know exactly how consciousness works, regardless of how we choose to believe that it originated. There is, however, no known reason to assume that consciousness did not evolve.
This has been done, yet creationists still exist.
Good and evil can readily be explained in a materialistic context, using a combination of evolution and social convention. But why do you call these "non-material", as if they cannot be composed of "matter and energy interacting in our heads"? Where is your evidence that they are not?
I don't deny them, and I suspect you don't either. So who is this "we"?
Yes, I disagree. Again, who is "we"?
Yes, I do. Why do you assume that I do not?

Evolution provides a basis for truth. I am descended from an unbroken chain of millions of ancestors whose survival has depended largely on being able to perceive their surroundings and deduce "truths" from those perceptions. All MY ancestors got this right, on every occasion where it really mattered. So did yours, though you won't give them the credit they deserve. Many did not, and died without progeny.

RufusAtticus

Charkes Darwin,

In case you haven't noticed, I've addressed Scadding's paper here.

Prince Vegita

Its probably called the Fallacy of the Precluded Possibility, or more likely the Argument from "Your Honor, I Got Nothing".