Duvenoy

Droxin, I think I see what the problem is. You are coming from a position of faith.

You see, speaking for myself, I have no faith in the Theory of Evolution. I have no belief in it. I merely accept it as the best explanation for certain, biological phenomena put forth thus far. It is no different than pi being 3.14-to as far as anyone has calculated it. Do you accept the evidence of pi, although you haven't tried to nail down the last, pathetic decimal? I haven't and have no intention of doing so. I'm willing to accept that it goes as far as forever. But still, a most useful number.

The Theory of Evolution has withstood many more challenges than pi (although some idiots want it to be leglislated as a solid 3. Yeesh!). And, unlike pi, it would seem that there are a great many opportunties to debunk it. It has been tried and tried, and it is still being tried. ALL of the attempts have fallen and are falling beneath the weight of the empirical evidence.

Unfortunatly, all too many Creationist rely on distortions, quotes out of context, and outright lies. Observe Kent Hovind's site to see prime examples. AiG is another that will say anything to further it's dogma. I think that the Aussies are smarter than us. Unable to bamboozle his countrymen, Ken Ham came here. Yikes! How dumb are we? In the IRC site, I read a story of how two people took a trip to Alaska in search of unfosslized dinosaur bones. Needless to say, after numerous adventures, they found a Miaosaure(sp?) jaw. Natural bone. Alas, the last time I looked, the story was removed. I wonder why? It really was a good yarn.

In short, I can be convinced to dismiss the Theory. All you have to do is come up with the right evidence. But stories of the supernatural won't cut it. Gimmie REAL evidence.

doov

Quetzal

That's all very nice, CT. However, you didn't answer the question I posed to Droxyn:
what is the evidence in favor of creationism? Use the form I suggested. You can bring in anything from genetics, comparative anatomy, etc that supports the evidence. For example: species A is good evidence for design because the retroviral insertion at locus 7 on chromosome 4 are not congruent with... You get the picture.

Pulling the old creationist strawman of attacking evolution as some kind of "positive" evidence for creationism ain't gonna work.

Really looking forward to your "evidence".

Stephen T-B

Droxyn: "...but I think we both believe that all the answers can be found if we are diligent in our search."
In this statement, Droxyn gives himself away, and at the same time exposes the Creationists to the most damaging charge that can be made against them.
"we both believe that all the answers can be found..."
Rubbish. Creationists want all the answers to be found - in fact not found but provided - but everyone else accepts, and is perfectly comfortable with, the possibility that they never will ALL be found.
Has it not dawned on Droxyn that every answer provided by scientific inquiry leads to a whole bunch of new questions, all needing to be answered. This is the process by which our knowledge of the cosmos and our place in it grows; and very very slowly it grows too. Indeed, if human beings were to survive for another 100,000 years I doubt if it would even then be anywhere near complete.
Of course evolution theory has holes in it; only a Creationist mind-set would demand of it that it provides perfect and complete picture of what has occurred during the last 2,000,000,000 years.
And now to the charge which Creationists must answer.
Their acceptance that Genesis is Divine Revelation means that scientific inquiry is not only unnecessary - the Bible tells us everything we need to know - but also blasphemous because it implies a questioning of what God has revealed.
When the Church exercised absolute control over men's minds, humanity remained in a state of stagnating ignorance; who dared to question the assertion, for instance, that night and day had nothing to do with the sun?
Only with the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo - much resisted by the Church as we know - did the first cracks begin to appear in the dam of Church sponsored ignorance.
The Church remained uncomfortable with scientific inquiry and the discoveries it was making for many decades, but as its authority weakened, so its ability to prevent it also diminished. Can you, for instance, imagine what the fate of a Charles Darwin would have been had he lived before the Enlightenment?
The Creationists of today continue that Church tradition of suppressing our curiosity, for curiosity is incompatible with Divine Revelation, and when Droxyn states ..." all the answers can be found if we are diligent in our search," he does not mean "search" as a scientist would interpret the word: he means diligence in terms of looking for support of the Creationist myth.
The Bible locked humankind into a Dark Age of ignorance and superstition in which plague, pestilence and famine were god's divine judgment, and were not to be resisted.
The Creationists are survivors of that Dark Age, and as our knowledge inexorably grows, so they will be forced into an ever-tightening corner, and their squeals against "Atheists" and "Evoluitionists" grow ever more strident.

Oolon Colluphid

Morpho, I think we both know that no creationist has actual evidence for creation, only attacks on evolution. I certainly don't know of any evidence for creation... do you, CT?

Oolon

Stephen T-B

CT won't have any problem with that: he'll assert that WE are evidence of Creation; we and everything in the Universe.Furthermore, we know we are god's creation because the Bible says so and the Bible is the Word of God - and you'd better believe it because the folks who wrote say it is.

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: Stephen T-B ]</p>

Stephen T-B

And then Ed will come in - or he would if he hadn't gone home with his bat - to say Creation is PROVED by the laws of Cause and Effect, the Universe being the Effect and God being the Cause. But if you ask him what caused God, he'll say nothing: God caused everything. And there his curiosity comes to an abrupt and entirely satisfying (for him) end.

Creation's Terrier

Stephen... well I’m sorry if most creation believers are so predictable.

For one thing, I could have sworn I’d mentioned bat echolocation. A very load sound is made; very faint echoes listened for. How does evolution explain the on-off mechanism of bats’ hearing that stops them being deafened by their own squeaks? Specifically, the timing of it, to coincide precisely with each squeak?

For another, there’s the vertebrate eye (or cephalopod one, or any Paley’s Watch (tm) you care to mention). Sure, it could have evolved step by tiny step from previous versions. But are evolutionists seriously expecting us to believe that each tiny mutation really did turn up right on cue? That that many (admitted: each not ‘too improbable’) mutations really did (rather than hypothetically might) happen, in the right order? Where’s your evidence?

CT

nogods4me

You have got to be kidding.
The eye as evidence of creation? Humans are supposed to the entire point of this creation business, and yet our eyes stink. Take a look about at all the folks wearing glasses. That is supposed to be evidence of a creator? good golly, the human body as more design flaws and bugs than Windows 95. Who was this creator, Rube Goldberg? Get a grip CT, and try again. Show us something that is evidence of a creator? and an infallible one at that.
And for the 10^263 time, a problem with evolution does not automatically = evidence for creation. creation requires evidence of it's own, got any?

Quetzal

Somehow, I don't think he does.

[Morpho considers the use of appropriate popular expressions containing the words "hoist" and "petard" to be very apt in these cases.]

Oolon Colluphid

Bugger...

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>