Domain: nwcreation.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nwcreation.net.
Comments · 28
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Far more widespread... But there are solutions.
This phenomenon may have started in the US, but they know very well they'll eventually reach some point of saturation in such a politically divided country. That's why creation science proponents are on an all-out assault on science throughout the world, especially in developing nations.
http://www.nwcreation.net/international.html
Oh, you thought it had something to do with missionary work and spreading the Gospel message? NO. These organizations (Institute for Creation Research, Creation Ministries International, The Discovery Institute, and a few other smaller ones) are big business. Look at their Web sites. From the very first page, they're either asking for donations or they're selling you their wares. Homeschooling textbooks, tracts, videos. Yes, the missionary work is integral to their purpose -- they need a wide audience of buyers. They're happy to do that too.
You aren't going to be able to counter this movement with any kind of science education. They have their own "science" now, any science from any other source will be viewed with tremendous suspicion if it conflicts with their view of creation. You need to work this at its source -- by educating people on the history of creationist thought, and the reasons *why* they believe what they do -- educate them on the *reason* why they have a certain *interpretation* of the Bible. If you're an atheist, you'll think it's easy enough, just discredit the Bible. But attacking a person's faith at its core is NOT going to help, it only adds fuel to the fire. So please DON'T take that approach. Seriously, it will make things much, much worse.
The only way forward is to educate Christians on creationism as a movement itself, in a way that is NOT abusive to their faith. Get people to learn specifically about the history of the three organizations mentioned above! There is a tremendous amount of dirty laundry there (see http://truecreation.info/ or the book Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight) Better yet, find respected Christians who they trust, who understand science -- and geology, cosmology, and evolutionary biology in particular. It can be done:
http://biologos.org/
http://truecreation.info/
http://theistic-evolution.com/Books:
The Language of Science and Faith, Karl Giberson and Francis Collins
Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, and Evolution, Deborah Haarsma and Loren Haarsma
Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight, Michael Hawley
Beyond the Firmament, Gordon J. Glover
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, Kenneth Miller
The Passionate Intellect, Alister McGrath
I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution, Denis O. Lamoureux
The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton -
Surprisingly, not all of them.
Creationism (as in Biblical creationism) is spreading in China through missionary work:
http://www.skepticblog.org/2009/01/18/chinese-creationist/
But it's worse than that. US creationist organizations are actively translating their materials and working to disseminate them on a global scale:
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Re:How is it anti-science to teach...
Surely you meant to say no evolution theories have been put forth by ID supporters. One thing I can say for sure is that Scientific American will publish no scientific study that calls evolution into question. http://www.nwcreation.net/journalcreation.html is a list of sources.
Scientific American is a pop-sci magazine, not a scientific journal. You need actual scientific evidence to support your claims, and then you need to have that evidence peer-reviewed. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to find in that list. It seems to be a list of sites containing rants of various levels of competency published by people who can't figure out how to create even a halfway decent website. Even the ones with "science" in the name don't seem to be scientific, as they seem to rant against practicing science rather than just starting with your conclusion and working backwards.
I didn't find anything actually scientific so far, but given the mess that most of those sites are, I wouldn't know where to begin to look for what you're saying is there either. So, since you seem to think there's some value tucked away in there, could you please point me to the particular needles in this haystack that are relevant to this particular discussion? I would really like to see what it is that modern science is conspiring to cover up.
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Re:Noah, etc
you'd have about $1.35 (before taxes). Now start reading and post again when you have considered why such a terrific story has worldwide prominence. I like to point out, regardless of our differences, A BILLION Chinese can't be wrong.
Of course, you ignore the vast differences between all the different flood myths, the very different times for the various floods, and the simple fact that flooding is such a common disaster all over the world. In one Chinese flood myth, the Great Flood takes about three generations. The Gilgamesh one is so similar because that is where the Old Testament story comes from! It's really not that hard to understand. You are doing what is commonly referred to as "grasping at straws".
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Re:Noah, etc
you'd have about $1.35 (before taxes). Now start reading and post again when you have considered why such a terrific story has worldwide prominence.
I like to point out, regardless of our differences, A BILLION Chinese can't be wrong. -
Re:Still doing that?
The Greek philosophers were not team players, they were each pretty self-centred.
Is that why Plato's Republic is all about improving society as a whole? I'll grant that the "team" of Pythagoras did cut themselves off from society, but that's another team.
Polytheism means that with many Gods you can have many truths
Nope, sorry. There might be many opinions about Aphrodite and Ares, but the "truth" that they had an affair is not up for debate.
All polytheism does is suggest that truth is ultimately independent of the gods -- or at least, of these gods.
Your argument that there is not a scientific "canon" seems pretty shallow to me. At the simplest level, there are journals that a university/RI wants you to publish in and those that they don't. That creates a canon.
No, that creates a university policy. There are other universities, if you really want to publish something in a questionable journal.
What you seem to be missing is that science is, fundamentally, not what we've discovered, but how we go about discovering things.
I can't link to a paper or set of statistics to support it because it's not that kind of information.
Not that kind of source, no. More like...
I'm just a guy on the internet who has done a fair bit of reading and sees these things as coming out of it.
You're asserting this:
That is that the idea of having an external, universal truth that you're searching for as a team; having a "canon" of accepted material documenting that truth; having institutionally-recognised experts who will teach students...
So, if you have any more examples like this -- and you can show that they actually came from religion, and not (as I think I've shown) that they predate monotheism, at the very least -- that would be a lot more interesting than "If you look at the history, you'll find..."
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Re:Absence of Evidence
Thanks for that comment. It inspired me to post a snippet of a similar conversation I had months ago, with your links and some others added:
Is it right, however, to lump together those who are skeptical of evolution with those who are skeptical of AGW, particularly CO2-driven AGW ?
Creationists confuse religious faith with falsifiable science. Among the general public, climate-change contrarians (and your average Greenpeace/PETA loony) confuse political affiliation with falsifiable science. In both cases, scientists are much less likely to agree with either claim, and that likelihood decreases with increasing relevance of the scientist's field. That's probably why both groups tend to accuse the scientific community of conspiracy and/or widespread incompetence.
At my blog, the following statement is both legible and has popup titles describing why that link was chosen. Here it is without the links first: "And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational levels."
And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational lev els.
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Re:Challenge this
Of course you wouldn't. That doesn't mean it's not true.
Of course. You don't know me, I can't expect you to accept my word.
Every single word in the Bible was written by a human. God himself didn't manifest before you and hand you a copy; a human did.
Minor quibble, God manifested himself directly to Moses on Mount Sinai. (And plenty of other times in the Old Testament, but I won't go off topic too far) And Jesus (who I and most Christians believe is true God) walked and talked with man and his words and actions were directly recorded in scripture.
Your belief that God used his divine power to preserve the accuracy of the Bible was also taught to you by a human (and, ultimately, cooked up by a human).
See above.
You simply cannot escape the element of human fallibility present in the Bible, and in all arguments made to it's final authority... In that light, what rational reason can you give me for believing that the (very strange) stories in the Bible (the ones about heaven, hell, superhuman powers, talking animals, and so on) are concretely and historically accurate?
Quite simply: the bible was written by fourty-some authors over several thousand years. The first author was Moses. The last authors were the apostles, after the death of Christ. And yet, over the span of several thousand years and tens of writers, all of their accounts stack up. No other spiritual book has been vetted over the course of history with so many corresponding, agreeing accounts. It also stacks up with local historical records from various groups.
Even if you can't wrap your head around the Bible being inerrant, there's no reason not to believe a lot of these events didn't occur. For example, the flood is a common reoccurring theme in many cultures. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Chinese classic "Hihking" and others. Virtually every culture has its own flood on a near global scale. Many old testament stories are shared between the Koran and the Hebrew bible (being in essence the Christian old testament, recategorized). So it is not difficult to believe these things occurred, as even multiple religions can come to some agreement on their existence! -
Re:Science publications solved the problem
"An entire field may have a bias"...
So...you'll be taking a trip to creation museum, eh?
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Re:Science-Creationism parser
Thus all the other humans nowadays native Americans, Chinese, Aboriginees etc. are either from another 'humanoid' flock or they could swim very very well
;)The 'other humans' may have built their own boats. Also likely took (mental) notes to come up with their own flood legend.
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Re: hindering science in God's name
You said, "Information addition/increase is a known fact."
Again, this is where we disagree. There are quite a number of scientists who disagree with you there... many times more then just a few "fringe" scientists. I'm talking about published, respected professors and scientists in fields like biology and genetics. Again, I'm not a geneticist nor a geologist so I'm not prepared to discuss these things in depth. Here is an article that seems to approach this subject. It may be worth your time to read or skim over. http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/re1/chap ter2.asp Another, slightly different view, held by many "creationist" scientists is described at http://www.nwcreation.net/genetics.html. All I can do is give you these to think through and to show that there are quite a few scientists who disagree with the naturalistic position of "molecules to man" evolution.
Concerning the rest of your post, scientists have found real and valid problems with dating methods and assumptions currently employed (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/e arth.asp , http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/ra diodating.asp), as well as the interpretation of the fossil record as getting more complex through layers of "younger" rock (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v16/i2/e volution.asp , http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i2/fo ssils.asp , http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/fossils. asp).
My point is that creation scientists have a wide variety of hypothesis to explain the same natural phenomena that naturalistic or atheistic scientists attempt to explain. There is a lot of work done in these fields.
Given that fact I think it is sad that, yesterday for instance, the Ohio Board of Education decided to delete standards saying students should be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The standards even included a disclaimer that they do not require the teaching of intelligent design. As I understand it, some evolutionists raised the issue of court action in Ohio if the Ohio State Board of Education did not remove that guideline. And Ohio Governor Bob Taft indicated a few days ago that over time he would be selecting new board members who would not be critical of evolution.
The late Dr Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote a book, Evolution. In reply to a questioner who asked why he had not included any pictures of transitional forms, he wrote: "I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them ... . I will lay it on the line--there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." The renowned evolutionist (and Marxist) Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."
Yet you are saying you and many evolutionists see the fossil record as consisting of nothing but transitional forms. Given the fact that even evolutionists debate over aspects of evolution as critical as these, I think it is truly sad tha -
Re:"Unlocking the Mystery of Life" vid
Kenyon is regarded as being the first person to write a major book on the origin of life in modern times. (Note by the author: This book was written in 1969) He coauthored the book Biochemical Predestination along with Gary Steinman. In the book they commented on the disparity between conditions created in laboratories and those that probable existed in the ancient geological setting. Kenyon was an evolutionist at the time. Kenyon came to realize that if all this guidance was needed for such little results reached in the lab, that there must have been an intelligent designer.
http://www.nwcreation.net/wiki/index.php?title=Dea n_Kenyon -
Re:Why this is important
Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Volume II http://www.icr.org/store/index.php?main_page=pubs
_ product_book_info&products_id=2655
Creation's Tiny Mystery by Robert V. Gentry http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0961675330/qid=11 36933189/104-3539345-2578349
Bones Of Contention: A Creationist Assessment Of Human Fossils by Marvin L. Lubenow http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801065232/qid=11 36933445/104-3539345-2578349
Evolution on Trial by Dr. Thomas Kindell http://kindell.nwcreation.net/biography.htm (don't reading the excerpt; not representative)
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Re:Well good
Interesting that you should mention that. We see transitionals within the cambrian period. Google lobopods (between worms and arthropods). I'm not sure how you think that the "cambrian explosion" somehow works against evolutionary theory. All we see is a proliferation of new phyla over the course of 5-40 million years. There are a lot of good ideas as to why this was a major branching point (appearance of mobile predators, the development of "hox genes", etc.) and no reason to think that it's odd.
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&actio n=view&ID=242. The Cambrian Explosions is called an explosion exactly because there was very little life below it, then boom mega population explosion of various life forms. An explosion of life! The exact oposite of what darwinists expected. They expected many more prior slow transitions through the sediment layers below to more simple lifeforms, leading right back to the common ancestors.A person trained in the field can look at a fossil and tell you how old it will turn out to be when it is dated.
Not exactly a scientific journal, but interesting reading all the same. Many other dating methods shown to be flakey also. How do we really know how old the earth is? -
Re:Falsifiability
As a believer in ID, I can tell you that the idea that the earth is only 6000 years old is pure bunk. Nowhere in the bible is there ANY evidence to support that idea.
No, the Bible doesn't say "God created the Heavens and the Earth in 4037 B.C. on the 27th of January at 3:00pm GMT." But it does give genealogies, "so-and-so begat so-and-so," which can give you a rough estimate if you add them up. If you believe the Bible to be accurate, then 6000 years is a close enough approximation.
A lot of people scoff at the notion that the earth has only been here for 6,000 years, but that's only impossible if you assume life must have taken millions of years to evolve or that various geological formations took millions of years to form, or that radiometric dating is never wrong. Without those assumptions, there's really no reason why 6,000 years couldn't work.
ID opponents claim ID isn't science, because it's not falsifiable. Well, they're right. You can't test it, you can't reproduce it, you can't observe it, you can't prove it. The problem is, you can't really test "evolution" (by which in this case I mean the theory that all life evolved from more primitive species over several million years) either - you can make observations about our current situation, and use conclusions from those observations to predict the results of future experiments, but you can't say that proves how something happened in the past, just because it could happen that way now. -
Re:Not That Easy
"So how do those young earthers explain fossils?"
The record of destruction of the flood. The regularized sequence is explained by three causes: ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape. The mechanism for producing the flood is catastrophic plate techtonics.
For a good overview of the young-earth view, two good books are Origins: Linking Science and Scripture and Understanding the Pattern of Life (links are using my Amazon referral link because I'm a selfish, greedy bastard). A description of the current theory of the flood is contained at globalflood.org. All of these are by practicing scientists, although the author of "Origins" has not been publishing in the secular world for a while. Todd Wood, coauthor of "Understanding the Pattern of Life" is well-published secularly (you can search for "Wood TC" on medline). Likewise, the author of the global flood website is well-published (the first few publications listed are creationist, the rest are secular), and is a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
More detail about the fossil sorting of the flood is available in the book Flood Geology, though I think some of the articles there are a bit dated, and I have not personally read through it all.
If you're interested in a good young-earth website, see Northwest Creation Network's Wiki, or the more comprehensive but not always as good Answers in Genesis website.
As Ken Ham would say -- "what would you expect from a global flood? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth."
Personally, I lean young-earth but have not done enough study both biblically and scientifically to make a decisive stand on the topic. -
Re:Here we go again...
"The embryo drawings are discredited in the scientific world and any textbook which still has them decades later is a discredit to their ability to stay current, not an indication that evolution is false."
I didn't say it was an indication that evolution was false. I said it was a perpetuation of a secular myth. Just as you don't want religious myths being perpetuated by the school system, I don't see any reason why secular myths should likewise be perpetuated. Yet much of the teaching of evolution is more indoctrination of secular mythology than in actual science.
"Though similar kinds of changes have been observed on many occasions (which for some reason the creationists don't tell us) it is true that the methodology behind the peppered moths findings was flawed."
Actually, creationists believe in faster diversification than evolutionists. Creationists believe that the original "created kinds" were roughly at the family level of taxonomy, at least for vertebrates. This is confirmed with breeding evidence, for which creationist groups have been building the hybrid database for research along these lines.
The difference is that creationists believe that the change process in animals are (a) a designed mechanism, and (b) limitted. Think of genetic algorithms -- while they are able to vary quite significantly, each is ultimately restricted to the constraints of their programming.
For one creationist hypothesis of how this change mechanism occurs, see this paper. He fleshes out more specifics in later papers. Todd Wood, the author of the paper, is part of the team that sequenced the rice genome, and, while not an authority, is well-published secularly. Also see Chris Ashcraft's review of genetic recombination and variability. -
Re:Here we go again...If matters of faith have no place in the schools then evolution should be removed. It is not only unproven but unprovable. By it's very nature it is nothing more than a faith with no diety. I am a Christian myself, and also believe Jesus is the way to salvation but the assumption that creationism is religion while evolution is science is dogma at it's finest. Science is the search for the truth, no matter what that might be, not the search for the truth as long as it's evolution. I'm not trying to get in to debate here but if you want to keep science and science only in the class room that's fine. Teach pure proven science like the laws of thermodynamics which conflicts with puddle-to-people evolution and let students make their own decissions, otherwise both models of origin should be welcome. After all no one is suggesting we teach which God made the universe or that students should worship him, but that we teach that there may be an intellect behind it's design. Are we so worried about people getting offended that it's ok to offend someone who belives in creation by teaching an opposing view, but not ok to offend an evolutionist by doing the same? The truth is both sides see the same evidence with different points of view and their reasoning comes to a conclusion based on the assumptions associated with that point of view. How bout some videos.
http://www.nwcreation.net/media/thermodynamic_arg
u ments.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/evidence_young_ea
r th.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvNow bear in mind these are creationist videos. Most people on here will instantly reject them because they have a strong faith in what they believe. You and I on the other hand look at them with an open mind because we believe in God and have no doubts that there is evidence of his handywork. Also, There is a difference between creationism and intelligent design which has been mentioned before. Creationism is specifically a mostly Christian area of research. Intelligent design can be but it doesn't have to be, it's more along the lines of it can be God, It can be "the force" but in any case it's an intellect larger than our own powerful enough to create the universe. Also there are plenty more but I think these are the best and I didn't post the ones in realvideo format. The quality is terrible and we all know real video is crap. But, if we want to stick to what the first ammendment has become, that the government shall not respect the establishment of any religion, then evolution counts and the government should not respect it's teachings. If it does than equal time is fair.
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Re:Here we go again...If matters of faith have no place in the schools then evolution should be removed. It is not only unproven but unprovable. By it's very nature it is nothing more than a faith with no diety. I am a Christian myself, and also believe Jesus is the way to salvation but the assumption that creationism is religion while evolution is science is dogma at it's finest. Science is the search for the truth, no matter what that might be, not the search for the truth as long as it's evolution. I'm not trying to get in to debate here but if you want to keep science and science only in the class room that's fine. Teach pure proven science like the laws of thermodynamics which conflicts with puddle-to-people evolution and let students make their own decissions, otherwise both models of origin should be welcome. After all no one is suggesting we teach which God made the universe or that students should worship him, but that we teach that there may be an intellect behind it's design. Are we so worried about people getting offended that it's ok to offend someone who belives in creation by teaching an opposing view, but not ok to offend an evolutionist by doing the same? The truth is both sides see the same evidence with different points of view and their reasoning comes to a conclusion based on the assumptions associated with that point of view. How bout some videos.
http://www.nwcreation.net/media/thermodynamic_arg
u ments.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/evidence_young_ea
r th.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvNow bear in mind these are creationist videos. Most people on here will instantly reject them because they have a strong faith in what they believe. You and I on the other hand look at them with an open mind because we believe in God and have no doubts that there is evidence of his handywork. Also, There is a difference between creationism and intelligent design which has been mentioned before. Creationism is specifically a mostly Christian area of research. Intelligent design can be but it doesn't have to be, it's more along the lines of it can be God, It can be "the force" but in any case it's an intellect larger than our own powerful enough to create the universe. Also there are plenty more but I think these are the best and I didn't post the ones in realvideo format. The quality is terrible and we all know real video is crap. But, if we want to stick to what the first ammendment has become, that the government shall not respect the establishment of any religion, then evolution counts and the government should not respect it's teachings. If it does than equal time is fair.
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Re:Here we go again...If matters of faith have no place in the schools then evolution should be removed. It is not only unproven but unprovable. By it's very nature it is nothing more than a faith with no diety. I am a Christian myself, and also believe Jesus is the way to salvation but the assumption that creationism is religion while evolution is science is dogma at it's finest. Science is the search for the truth, no matter what that might be, not the search for the truth as long as it's evolution. I'm not trying to get in to debate here but if you want to keep science and science only in the class room that's fine. Teach pure proven science like the laws of thermodynamics which conflicts with puddle-to-people evolution and let students make their own decissions, otherwise both models of origin should be welcome. After all no one is suggesting we teach which God made the universe or that students should worship him, but that we teach that there may be an intellect behind it's design. Are we so worried about people getting offended that it's ok to offend someone who belives in creation by teaching an opposing view, but not ok to offend an evolutionist by doing the same? The truth is both sides see the same evidence with different points of view and their reasoning comes to a conclusion based on the assumptions associated with that point of view. How bout some videos.
http://www.nwcreation.net/media/thermodynamic_arg
u ments.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/evidence_young_ea
r th.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvNow bear in mind these are creationist videos. Most people on here will instantly reject them because they have a strong faith in what they believe. You and I on the other hand look at them with an open mind because we believe in God and have no doubts that there is evidence of his handywork. Also, There is a difference between creationism and intelligent design which has been mentioned before. Creationism is specifically a mostly Christian area of research. Intelligent design can be but it doesn't have to be, it's more along the lines of it can be God, It can be "the force" but in any case it's an intellect larger than our own powerful enough to create the universe. Also there are plenty more but I think these are the best and I didn't post the ones in realvideo format. The quality is terrible and we all know real video is crap. But, if we want to stick to what the first ammendment has become, that the government shall not respect the establishment of any religion, then evolution counts and the government should not respect it's teachings. If it does than equal time is fair.
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Re:Here we go again...If matters of faith have no place in the schools then evolution should be removed. It is not only unproven but unprovable. By it's very nature it is nothing more than a faith with no diety. I am a Christian myself, and also believe Jesus is the way to salvation but the assumption that creationism is religion while evolution is science is dogma at it's finest. Science is the search for the truth, no matter what that might be, not the search for the truth as long as it's evolution. I'm not trying to get in to debate here but if you want to keep science and science only in the class room that's fine. Teach pure proven science like the laws of thermodynamics which conflicts with puddle-to-people evolution and let students make their own decissions, otherwise both models of origin should be welcome. After all no one is suggesting we teach which God made the universe or that students should worship him, but that we teach that there may be an intellect behind it's design. Are we so worried about people getting offended that it's ok to offend someone who belives in creation by teaching an opposing view, but not ok to offend an evolutionist by doing the same? The truth is both sides see the same evidence with different points of view and their reasoning comes to a conclusion based on the assumptions associated with that point of view. How bout some videos.
http://www.nwcreation.net/media/thermodynamic_arg
u ments.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/evidence_young_ea
r th.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvhttp://www.nwcreation.net/media/astronomy_and_bib
l e.wmvNow bear in mind these are creationist videos. Most people on here will instantly reject them because they have a strong faith in what they believe. You and I on the other hand look at them with an open mind because we believe in God and have no doubts that there is evidence of his handywork. Also, There is a difference between creationism and intelligent design which has been mentioned before. Creationism is specifically a mostly Christian area of research. Intelligent design can be but it doesn't have to be, it's more along the lines of it can be God, It can be "the force" but in any case it's an intellect larger than our own powerful enough to create the universe. Also there are plenty more but I think these are the best and I didn't post the ones in realvideo format. The quality is terrible and we all know real video is crap. But, if we want to stick to what the first ammendment has become, that the government shall not respect the establishment of any religion, then evolution counts and the government should not respect it's teachings. If it does than equal time is fair.
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Re:Intelligent Design, explained Intelligently
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Re:Intelligent Design, explained Intelligently
"OK, bring on the experiments. Describe an experiment that can be used to disprove design in a given organism."
Actually, in ID, undesign is the null hypothesis. What you have to do is show statistically that undesign is untenable.
ID divides causitive action into three possibilities: necessity, chance, and agency. If you can prove that a given item is neither a product of necessity nor chance, then it must be the result of agency.
Biology is not the only use of ID. Similar methods have been used in Archaeology for decades to decide if a given artifact was pottery or a naturally occurring substance. Likewise, a similar methodology is being used in SETI to determine if a signal from space is from natural origin or from an intelligent agent.
Of course, the most telling thing about us that would lead someone to believe in an intelligent designer is DNA. Can you name any other codal system that would be natural? DNA is not a pattern like a crystal is a pattern. Instead, DNA is a codified system, where the medium of DNA is independent of the message it signifies. In fact, you have all of the components for a Shannon communication system. In what other aspect of undesigned nature do we find a codal system? Is there any? I haven't heard of another.
Anyway, for more about ID, see setting the facts straight on Intelligent Design, and the CI set of responses from Northwest Creation Network. -
Re:Intelligent Design, explained Intelligently
Actually, according to calculations done on the model by JBS Haldane, the maximum number of mutations (of any sort -- duplication, base-pair, etc) between man and the most recent ancestor of man and apes is 1,667 based on the evolutionary timetable. this link has more information, and at the bottom has a link to another article with other evidence against the hypothesis that men and apes shared a common ancestor.
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Re:Another giant step backward..."... lower layers in the Earth's crust are comprised of heavier, larger chunks,
..."
No, the flood would have been a very turbulent time. At any time portions of the flood waters may have been relatively still, or causing massive erosion. While in small areas and across a few layers this might be true I wouldn't expect it to hold for the entire rock layers.Noah's ark. This topic has been investigated by heaps of people, that was just the first link returned by google, there may be better ones.
Natural selection does occur. Animals procreate and mix their DNA together and create a new combination of genes. This process does not create any more information, but different features of the animal are selected. In a small population with heavy inbreeding the animal becomes more specialised, information is lost, and the amount of variation among the offspring is reduced. This is not the result of random mutation, which destroys information, it is a pre-programmed ability. For example, from a basic wolf, we now have all the various dog breeds.
After the flood and massive climate changes, there were short periods of ice ages. This would have created the neccessary land bridges for animals and people to migrate to all of the main continents. Though people may have used boats and may have transported some kinds of animals.
The oceans are *now* very deep. there is easily enough water to cover the earth to a depth of 3km if the ground layer at the time was flat. There is plenty of evidence of tectonic plate movement, I would assert that this took place over a short time frame. As the plates collided the mountains would have been raised up. The water would have then flowed very rapidly off of the land masses carving the great canyons and river basins of the world.
This seems to be a reasonable introduction. disclaimer, I haven't read it all so I can't say if I agree with everything presented.
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Re:Another giant step backward...
Have you ever taken a soil sample, in a test tube, added water and shaken it?
You get a lot of nice even layers as the soil particles settle to the bottom. Each layer contains particles that are the same size / density.
On the other hand if these layers of rock took so long to form why is there no evidence of soil? Why are the layers so even?
Then of course there's the evidence presented by the recent Mt St Helens eruptions. -
Re:The Gray Goo will NEVER happen!
Please refer to the wikipedia refference to thermodynamics:
http://www.nwcreation.net/wiki/index.php?title=2nd _Law_of_Thermodynamics
#1 a teacup sitting on a table is not in a very high entopy level compared to the requierments of nanotech.
#2 you are assuming the only things in the system are the table, the tea cup and gravity...the reality is that the only closed system is the entier universe. The table will eventually rot dropping the teacup. The tea will evaporate off (increasing entropy) etc.
#3 nanotech is more like the "magic" acts that include someone spinning a saucer on top of a 10 foot pole...in a closed system, with no friction, no air resistance and perfect balance, that is a stable setup. This is not a realistic statment.
#4 At atomic scales all atoms have a "jitter." The are always bouncing around. It takes energy to place them into the correct position and depending on the stability of the bond the random jitters of the neighboring atoms can impart enough energy to break the bond you just established.
#5 Only when everything in the system is at exactly the same entropy level (as in when there is NO free energy in the system) will the entropylevel stay the same. In all other cases it will trend upwards. -
You don't get it! (-:
The argument is that since real structure cannot sensibly arise from randomness (e.g. beaches aren't turned into computers by the action of wind, waves, rain or lightning) and we think rationally (or at least we think we do... but down that recursive path lies madness) our presence here cannot be accidental.
He's not questioning the scientific method, he's questioning our ability to apply it, firstly at all in a random universe and secondly with overriding philosophical constraints. Creationists use the scientific method just like anyone else, the only difference being that they don't make an a priori assumption of materialism (the doctrine that there can be no supernatural effects). Some of them make an assumption of little-d deism but that's not actually necessary to avoid materialistic pitfalls.
Supernatural effects can be measured and and studied scientifically just like anything else. You can only assert otherwise based on just such an a priori assumption.
Materialistic assumptions have been shown to be capable of leading mainstream science badly astray. Note in particular the Baker quote from Ref 11.