scigirl

San Diego Atheist,

Awesome post! I especially loved this quote:
scigirl

Starboy

Greetings Feisty,

Firstly, I think it would be more correct to say that creation is easier to __understand__ than evolution. One can almost picture the sequence of creation events in one's mind; in contrast evolution is very murky with many branches and false starts and has nothing to say about how it got started in the first place. All that said, in scientific circles, evolution has greater credibility than creation and visa versa. If we lived in a world were the fruits of scientific discovery were not as great as they are now, lets us say three hundred years ago, scientists would be viewed as crackpots and all right thinking people would know that creationism is the correct way to understand our origins.

Fast forward three hundred years to the present, it is now obvious that science is the most successful human endeavor for understanding our surroundings than any other philosophical or religious movement in the history of mankind! This gives science great credibility in the eyes of the public. When scientists speak, their pronouncements are reported with great weight. Of course this doesn’t make them right, but from a social point of view, the public sees them as being on the winning team, and everybody loves a winner!

Now for the big SHOCKER! From a scientific point of view, evolution could very well be WRONG! AH-HA, you say, I knew it, GOD created the universe and all of its creatures! And I would say TISC- TISC, just because evolution is wrong doesn’t make creationism right. Odds are they are both wrong.

My guess is at this point you would say, “I don’t think so!” and you would start about first causes and so forth. My answer to that would be: I don’t really care about first causes. As a practitioner of science I am only looking for a few things in a scientific theory:

1. Is the theory testable? (can experiments be constructed to test its predictions)
2. Does the theory have predictive power? (does it predict what can’t happen as well as what can? Does it predict things we don’t know about?)
3. Is the theory consistent with current scientific knowledge?

I am going to let you in on a dirty little secret about science. You see, as a scientist, I don’t deal in truth, wouldn’t know what to do with it if you handed it to me on a silver platter. Because all scientific knowledge is tentative, none of it is known to be true, and some of it is suspected of actually being false! As an example, the latest neutrino data from the sun indicates that the standard model is wrong. And of course anyone who has studied quantum mechanics has got to have their doubts, but at the end of the day, the only thing you can say is that it works and until something better comes along it will have to do. As a scientist, I don’t have to like it, I just have to make sure it works. (This really is the essence of the scientific method.)

This brings us back full circle to creationism vs evolution. Evolution is a scientific theory and creationism is not. If you are not a scientist, this should not matter to you at all, but for us scientists it makes all the difference in the world.

Adios,

Starboy

jj

I can't see anything of substance to address.

First, the use of the word "evolutionism" is purely out of the "creation science" propaganda mill. It's "evolution".

Second, well, one theory is falsifable, and has so far survived that test rather convincingly. The other assertion (I won't call it a theory, or even a punitive theory) is not falsifable, can not be verified, tested, or even rationally examined.

Third, creation of the universe is NOT evolution. The start of life is NOT evolution. One is called 'cosmology', the second 'abiogensis" and only how living things, once they came to exist, changed, is evolution.

Yeesh.

Coragyps

Hey, Starboy! Welcome to II, and that was an excellent post! Drop by the introductions forum and introduce yourself, if you wish - or just remain mysterious.

Stephen T-B

There is an issue here about simplicity v. complexity.
What religion always does is to simplify.
What Scientific inquiry tends to do is to reveal mind-boggling complexity.
FeistyCreationChick would seem to prefer simplicity - it's "easier to believe."
Those who oppose her here are lovers of complexity or they wouldn't be scientists. They're be preachers.
Preachers look at a shiny surface and say: "That's nice. God made it. Let's praise Him."
Scientists look at a shiny surface and they scrape off samples which they examine under a microscope and subject to tests to discover what they are made of, and below the shiny surface they find another layer, and they analyse that one and after 50, 100, 150 years they're still digging and no end in sight - and arguing, too, about what they've so far found out.
Going for the simplicities offered by religion is a lot less bothersome, but it does require an inability or refusal to notice how reality contradicts them.

MOJO-JOJO

My "hunch" is that FeistyCreationChick is none other than the famous "Helen" of the Baptist Board. Not our HelenSL, of course, but the Helen with the little picture of herself gaffawing like Mr.Ed at the notion that people are evolved from lesser primates rather than being "poofed" out of thin air by an invisible ghost magician.

Anyway, her argument above comports with all the crap she spreads on the Baptwits Board to other gullible believers.

[ June 17, 2002: Message edited by: MOJO-JOJO ]</p>

scigirl

I don't think it's her, MOJO.

* She said, "I was raised with Christianity shoved down my throat. I never bought into it because it just didn't seam feasible or even CLOSE to believable for me. " and "And PLEASE don't call me a Christian, because I don't like being associated with a name that society and religion itself have tarnished so badly that it could never recover. "
(Helen wouldn't be caught dead saying anything like that)

* Helen doesn't seem the type to want to be called a "chick"

* She did say she was from Wisconsin (although I guess she could be lying)

* Her second post seemed nice (Helen is not very nice, at least in my experience, to people who disagree with her).

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000877&p=3" target="_blank">Here's her second post.</a>

my 4 cents,

scigirl

MOJO-JOJO

Oops! You're right scigirl, I must have missed that post and stand corrected [blushing].

Why would a "non-Christian" buy in to Creation?

Oolon Colluphid

Ignorance.

Remember that before Darwin, Paley's Watch was pretty good evidence of a creator. In the absence of a known naturalistic mechanism, of course there must have been a creator. Or put it the other way: if there were no natural explanation, the most reasonable explanation would be god.

Now, of course, we do know of a powerful natural mechanism for producing complexity. But it is a very misunderstood mechanism, by and large. Without understanding natural selection (ie in ignorance of it), the watchmaker argument can still exert a powerful pull on people’s minds.

How often do we hear “How could so-and-so evolve?!” Only constantly.

IOW, given people’s ignorance, creation is a reasonable belief.

Cheers, Oolon

hezekiah jones

FeistyCreationChick
Interests: Christian Apologetics
Basic Beliefs: I believe in a personal relationship with my Creator, God.

"'Hey, what DO I believe? Do I believe that there really is a God like my parents said? Or do I believe in evolution and Godlessness?' ... Obviously you've discovered which belief I chose to trust in."

Not exactly, but something tells me it's not Yoruba cosmology.

"And PLEASE don't call me a Christian ... I promise to be respectful and not to copy and paste a bunch of Bible verses."

BS detector activated.