oriecat

Last night, Arvel and I were talking about some evolution/creation stuff (I showed him the Project Steve stuff, he loved it!), and he brought up a coworker of mine (former co-worker of his) who is a creationist and used to stick his finger in his face and rant about how there is more evidence for creation than there is for evolution, so read all the books, there's lots of them...

So today I was thinking about that, and wondering exactly what sort of evidence for creationism do they think exists? I don't even see how there can be ANY evidence for creation, because if god just poofs the universe into existence, what sort of evidence is gonna get left? What, is there some sort of poof dust that they found laying around somewhere? Or is it just that they have evidence that they think discredits evolution, and instead of being honest and saying it's evidence against evolution, they call it evidence for creation, even though those are two completely different things, and that discounts the possibility that maybe there is another option.

babelfish

Bingo.

Lobstrosity

I get the feeling their main "evidence" is what they perceive as a lack of evidence for other theories.

For example:

"Where is the missing link?"
"If the Earth is so old, why haven't we found more fossils?"
"No one has observed evolution and life to me looks like it was designed by intelligence."

It doesn't help that they haven't defined the term "missing link" and that they have no comprehension of how fossilization actually works. The third argument is just subjective opinion and carries no weight, but sadly I think that's what they use as the foundation for their very beliefs. If real scientists behaved this way, those creationists out there wouldn't have cars to drive around in and computers to browse these fora with. Science is the only real way to advance objective knowledge of our universe, but creationists conveniently deny this whenever it suits their personal biases, all the while hypocritically using that which science has generously provided them.

What creationists have to realize is that a lack of evidence in itself is not evidence for any specific theory. You can't default to one theory just because you think another one doesn't have enough evidence. For a theory to be valid, it needs to have supporting evidence on its own. If you don't believe in evolution, fine, but you can't use doubt over the validity of evolution as a springboard then assert creation. All you can do is say "I honestly have absolutely no idea how life got here." Sadly creationists don't seem to understand this. They think that so long as evolution is debunked Creation is the only reasonable alternative. This is incorrect.

Jayjay

The impression I have about the "evidence" for creation is that 99.9% of it can be put in the following two categories:

1) Whining about evolution.
2) Taking the evidence for evolution, and shoehorning it to fit the creation model.

Neither one of these is real evidence for creation. I do think that there might be some real evidence for creation in the remaining 0.1%. Argument from design is still remotely acceptable in areas where we simply don't have a clue as to what happened (abiogenesis, for example). But, the most effective evidence for creation I can think of is the Fermi paradox: it looks very much like we're alone in the galaxy, which either means that civilization is a very rare occurrence (we don't have enough data to confirm this), or that there is something fishy going on. If, on the other hand, there is a supernatural creator who specificly created us in a hostile universe, Fermi paradox is explained.

I know, it's weak evidence, but evidence nevertheless...

AmericanHeretic

Lobstrosity does a good job on evolution versus creation. I'll take out the other leg now.

The Big Bang has a great deal of evidence in support of it. Sure, religionists of all flavors lay claim to the Big Bang now that is has substantial evidentiary backing. They can say "God created the Big Bang" or ask "what happened before the Bang, that was God, see, there's always room for God" and they are quite pleased with themselves.

However....

The plausible God of the Big Bang is not the Christian God. One down. The God claimed to have made the Big Bang is not Allah either, two down. The fact is that all creation myths are disproven by the Big Bang, and if you disprove creation accounts, you very drastically dilute the remaining plausibility that the God a given religionist claims is there, may possibly actually be there.

This knocks down religions and associated gods. If someone wants to say a magical mystical energy force type God created the Big Bang and evolution, fine, nothing I can say can remove such faith, but surely, it is merely made up as it goes along, that ever-elusive always-slippery God of the Gaps. To my knowledge, the God of the Gaps has no formal religion, and so I hold out my hopes that someday our money will say "in the Big Bang and Evolution we trust".

I addressed the opposite of your question oriecat, the evidence that contra-indicates Creation by God, as seen in any given religion. It is my view that myths do not leave evidence and do not actually exist, hence, no evidence will ever be supplied proving any myth true or deity real.

Alix Nenuphar

I believe there is also a significant difference in what certain highly religious people regard as evidence.

In essence, all our information about the world stems from three sources:

1) empirical evidence (measurable, objective, etc.)

2) intuitive evidence (including revelation and reported revelation)

3) logical evidence (really a subset of either of the first two, since it represents application of models to the empirical or intuitive evidence)

It appears to me that 'creationists' are people who contend that intuitive evidence is epistemologically equivalent to empirical evidence. This is, I believe, the position that Philip Johnson takes: the Judeo-Christian scriptures are legitimate evidence, equivalent to empircal evidence, and just as capable of being treated in a scientific fashion.

I also suspect that Johnson and many of his compatriots believe that science has usurped the place of religion in modern society. It might be that consider that religion, as religion, has failed to hold the hearts and minds of the modern world, and that in order to be accepted, their tenets (e.g. the Bible) need to be relabeled as 'science' in order to gain the same credibility.

Granting that, of course creationism appears to be a logical, reasonable scientific endeavour.

An additional quirk is that many religious individuals are capable of recognizing the disctinction between the two types of evidence....

An interesting side issue is whether or not literalists (those who hold the equivalency of evidential types) demonstrate this literalism is other aspects of their lives.

Kosh

I won't even give you that, JayJay. The Fermi Paradox? Give me a break. Look how far we have travelled from Earth WRT the relative size of the universe. You can't even come close to claiming that "we seem to be alone".

Here's something for you to chomp on. The Columbia astronauts died further away from Earth than any human being in history......

They were a mere 40 miles away from the surface of the earth. Equivalent to 40 minutes travel in a car.

No, we're not even close to saying "We seem to be alone"....

Asha'man

I've have agree with Kosh on this one. The Fermi paradox is trivially explained by two simple observations: Space is really big, and the speed of light is slow in relation to the size of space.

As long as no civilization forms in the close neighborhood of another, and no way is found to beat the apparently unbeatable cosmic speed limit, then interstellar travel is fundamentally more expensive than it is worth. It's just unprofitable.

Jayjay

There is no technical limit that we are aware of that says a civilization (once it pops up) cannot colonize an entire galaxy, and if someone had done it we should be seeing the results without actually visiting other star systems. That's the point of Fermi's paradox, and so far there is no testable, scientific answer to the question, whereas the supernatural creation paradigm predicts this observation. That's why I think Fermi paradox qualifies as evidence for creation.

No doubt there are hypothetical, naturalistic explanations (you guys listed a few), but no naturalistic theory predicts the fact that we don't see anyone out there. The hypotheticals are comparable to the creationist shoehorning tactics, where anomalous observations (which, for creationists cover pretty much all the observations) are explained to fit the preconceived assumptions.

Really? What about the Russian cosmonauts who died during the soviet space station experiments in the 70s? Surely they were higher up than Columbia?

Kosh

I'm unaware of any soviet cosmonauts dying in space. There were 3 that died slowly as their capsule leaked during re-entry however.

But that's off topic now....