Mageth

In BC&A, discussing "flatearthism", for lack of a better term, Vanderzyden posted:

Why do you post stuff from Flat-Earth societies? Their denial of modern technological and explorative advancements calls their entire worldview into question. Interesting, now that I think about it: the denial of a spherical earth is similar to a denial of God's existence.

To which I replied:
As does the denial of "modern technological and explorative advancements" concerning origins call creationists' worldview into question? Denial of evolution is a better comparison to denial of a spherical earth.

Vanderzyden also posted:
I stated that this verse is consistent with, and not contrary to, modern astronomical observations.

To which I replied:
And Genesis 1-3 are contrary to modern observations.

In a later post, I posed this question resulting from the above exchange:

If the denial of "modern technological and explorative advancements" in astronomy call flatearthers' worldview into question, does the denial of "modern technological and explorative advancements" concerning origins call creationists' worldview into question?

Here is Vanderzydens answer:

The answer depends upon what is meant by "origins". Since I mentioned astronomy, then I would turn to cosmology. Then we could discuss the strong evidence which supports the Big Bang.

The answer also depends on what is meant by the term "creationist". Are we talking about six-day literalists, or creationists in the broad sense?

Allow me to guess that Mageth is alluding to Darwinism. He insinuates that there are technological and explorative advancements concerning the truth about life origins. Of course, this is not the thread or the forum to discuss the merits of Darwinian hypothesis. I will say briefly that we all know that this is the subject of intense debate, and there is no conclusive evidence that supports macroevolutionary theories. In fact, there is much evidence which is directly contradictory, such as the existence of genetic code and the Cambrian explosion.

I would suggest that, for this forum, "origins" implies Evolutionary science as it now stands, and "creationists" is to be taken broadly.

I would claim first that Van's reply does not answer my question satisfactorily. Whether the evidence is conclusive or not, one cannot deny that modern science has produced a lot of evidence in support of evolutionary theory. Does this or does this not call creationists' worldview into question?

I would also like to see Van post reasons that he thinks "genetic code" and the Cambrian explosion contradict evolutionary theory. (there are posters here more qualified than me to argue the evolutionary side).

Sidian

objectively, no, no observation can call their worldveiws into question.

If they believe god created the earth in six days "as is" then they believe all the observations we make are observations god intended us to make. We therefore are seeing light that god created "already traveling to earth" and geological layers that god put into place to "look" like they formed over years.

just the observations will never call them to question their beliefs or worldveiw as they are also part of the creation.

lpetrich

Philip Gosse's Omphalos hypothesis of created appearance is, indeed, irrefutable, but most creationists prefer to avoid it.

And as to the Cambrian explosion and the genetic code, neither is fatal to evolutionary biology.

Here is <a href="http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/Ecology/early_animal_evolution.htm" target="_blank">an excellent article</a> that discusses the Cambrian explosion; it was not as sudden as some creationists seem to think.

And as to the genetic code, the favorite hypothesis for its origin involves the "RNA world", some early organisms where RNA served as both information molecule and enzyme. However, these organisms liked to use coenzymes to help these enzymes; some coenzymes still have bits of RNA in them.

One route to making coenzymes was constructing them out of amino acids, and the genetic code emerged as a way of translating RNA sequences into amino-acid sequences. This enabled the production of a great variety of coenzymes, which eventually took over the functions of many RNA enzymes, thus enabling most of the original RNA enzymes to lose that function. Some of them still remain, however -- mainly as parts of the RNA-to-protein translation system.

Along the way, DNA emerged as a master-copy specialization of RNA.

This does leave unresolved the question of the origin of the RNA world, but that is a much simpler problem.