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It always saddens me when I encounter the religion vs. science debate because I don't think there should be any disagreement between the two. Both science and religion are studies of reality; though the approaches are radically different. I'm not familiar with the creation accounts of other religions, but I think the overall progression of creation described in the Bible fits current scientific understanding of planetary and ecological development quite well (though I'm no expert in either field). God used the natural laws that He created to form the universe that we see. I think the belief held by many biblical creationists that the universe was formed in six literal days is a misinterpretation of the biblical text. Days are often used in the Bible (and in modern colloquial English) to represent time periods or eras. I also think that the theory of macro evolution arose and is perpetuated by serious misinterpretation of observed data. Maybe my understanding of the theory is flawed, but wouldn't a good test of the theory be whether or not we find evidence of countless transitional species representing the ancestry of all the species that we see today? Have we found those and I'm just unaware of it? By the way, for anyone who is more interested in learning how science and the Bible agree than in mud-slinging, this website offers a lot of good information: http://www.reasons.org/

There's not the slightest evidence to support one religion's claims vs. another's...

No, this is completely false.

Peer-reviewed, supporting in its evidence a rather restricted subset of religion's whose after-death predictions are what is experienced.

Strong relative differences in success at future prediction again subset which are most plausible.

You will claim this is "not evidence". It will remain evidence after you do so.

In part, because there's no peer-reviewed studies (written by multiple PhD's and published in a journal of worldwide reknown, incidentally) which quantifies eyewitness reports of them, in the context where we would expect to find them, like this one:

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm

You cite a survey of near-death experiences that in no way whatsoever quantifies eyewitness reports of the Biblical god or Jesus.

http://www.reasons.org/articles/articles/fulfilled-prophecy-evidence-for-the-reliability-of-the-bible

"Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter--no errors. "

Ok, so where is this list of approximately 2000/2500?

"The acid test for identifying a prophet of God is recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. According to this Bible passage (and others), God's prophets, as distinct from Satan's spokesmen, are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error. [..] Given that the Bible proves so reliable a document"

What a joke. The Bible doesn't even get the most basic of cosmology right, that the Earth was created after the heavens. Also, there's a Wikipedia page on prophecies, and you can see plenty of questionable accuracy with the usual variation of apologists who take different tacks to explain them.

At minimum, it's an Appeal to Authority and an Ad Hominem. You are projecting a group of "rational people", lacking any definition, and asserting that a position is correct or incorrect based on whether they correspond to the supposed views your constructed group

It's no different than if I said rational and scientific people don't believe in Zeus or any number of primitive mythologies.

That one can be called a Bare Assertion Fallacy. There is, in fact, nothing about the belief that is in the least ridiculous

I listed several in my post, which you have attempted to address in your reply.

and you tying it's truth-status to its age is called the Genetic Fallacy.

It's not a fallacy to note that many primitive beliefs have been dispelled with our advancements in science and reason.

Many on that list are published theologians as well. So... if you want to see one, try reading one.

Try naming the paper that critically looks at the issue as I asked. It's not my responsibility to uphold your side of the argument.

Allegory, it says it is figuratively unmoving

Ah yes, whenever something is obviously wrong in the Bible it becomes an allegory, a problem in translation, or in some other way re-interpreted to fit the facts.

(you do realize in physics we now know there is no privileged frame of reference frame, correct?)

If that was what the Bible was saying, then there would be no need to make special mention of the Earth, and poor Galileo could have been left alone to do his science in peace. Furthermore, the Earth's rotation means that it cannot be chosen as an inertial frame.

local flood

What kind of warped reading to you have to do to turn a story about wiping out all the earth's animals and mankind into a "local flood" story? More re-interpretation.

And I can't tell, did you address the fact that the Bible has the Earth being created before the heavens as an allegory? That was given in a precise ordering of events. No allegory is going to save you from that bit of mythology.

I suggest less Dawkins parrot-training books

The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus might be real too, but you don't believe in them.

Correct. In part, because there's no peer-reviewed studies (written by multiple PhD's and published in a journal of worldwide reknown, incidentally) which quantifies eyewitness reports of them, in the context where we would expect to find them, like this one:

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm

We also have a much lower demonstrable success rate at predicting future events from Santa and the Tooth Fairy, as presented here:

http://www.reasons.org/articles/articles/fulfilled-prophecy-evidence-for-the-reliability-of-the-bible

I understand that some of these can be argued, such as upon a basis of supposed vagueness or the possibility of intentional fulfillment on the part of historical believers (for such cases where that would be possible). Therefore, feel free to reduce the estimated probability given by a billion times before we start our comparison with Santa's and the Tooth Fairy's published, verifiable future predictions.

Go ahead, list them. I didn't substantiate it with a treatise, but it doesn't violate logical fallacies.

Yes, it clearly does. At minimum, it's an Appeal to Authority and an Ad Hominem. You are projecting a group of "rational people", lacking any definition, and asserting that a position is correct or incorrect based on whether they correspond to the supposed views your constructed group, which, handily, you further imply, all agree with you, with no logical connection demonstrated between the group and the conclusion.

It's the summary of the ridiculous belief in primitive mythology that people hold.

That one can be called a Bare Assertion Fallacy. There is, in fact, nothing about the belief that is in the least ridiculous, and you tying it's truth-status to its age is called the Genetic Fallacy. Try learning a few of them, or at least develop to the level where you can understand the difference between an actual argument and a mere insulting characterization. You rely, apparently, entirely on the latter. It might work briefly for the easily-intimidated, but it won't work on anyone who knows the rules to reason that you do not, as our exemplar of "rationality".

That there is a minority of scientists who manage to compartmentalize there religious beliefs from their scientific and rational scrutiny means little.

No, -you- mean little, compared to Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Newton, Bayes, Linnaeus, Euler, Babbage, Maxwell, Mendel, Pasteur, Kelvin, Planck, and Heisenberg, to name a few from the list. Both in general, and to science specifically.

I'd like to see one such paper from a scientist in that list that justified their belief in a Biblical god

Many on that list are published theologians as well. So... if you want to see one, try reading one.

You can start at the very beginning, where the Earth is created before the heavenly bodies, to an Earth that doesn't move, and on to ridiculous Noah's Ark stories.

Allegory, it says it is figuratively unmoving (you do realize in physics we now know there is no privileged frame of reference frame, correct?), local flood. In order, summarizing.

The Christian faith is nothing but an offshoot of ancient Hebrew mythology.

Once again, Genetic Fallacy with a dash of Ad Hominem. I suggest less Dawkins parrot-training books, and more Philosophy 101 class. It will help you.

This is one topic where the biblical perspective makes a lot of sense. Since we were designed by a loving creator, it makes sense that we have a built-in reluctance to harm each other. Unfortunately, since we chose to do things our way instead of following his original design, our sinful nature all too often overrides his original programming like a computer virus. Fortunately, our creator offers a way to overcome this - sort of like a software update - through Jesus. Incidentally, here's an article discussing the results of another study of the physical-moral connection from a biblical perspective: http://www.reasons.org/articles/does-human-morality-arise-from-brain-chemistry That site also has a lot of other articles discussing scientific topics from a biblical perspective (and the Bible from a scientific perspective) that may interest my fellow slashdotters.

As far as I can tell, there are no valid arguments to support the notion of one or more gods.

Well, since I have basis to think it's necessary here, what do you consider "valid" and "supporting"?

Peer-reviewed medical studies?

Prophecy fulfillment? (Yes, I know the standard objections. Drop all the ones remotely possibly "self-fulfilling", reduce the improbability a million-fold after that, it's still extremely improbable.)

Willing martyrdom of contemporaries, that is, those in a position to -know- they are dying for a lie, if they were?

Formal philosophical arguments?

My guess, based on previous experience, is you mean by "valid", "whatever I need it to mean to exclude what I'm presented with", but if not, please give a clearer indicator of your expectations.

Without that, it's difficult to offer you what you say you want that you absolutely don't want. Yes, I do in fact know that from your demand for "proof" in a manner you'd do so for no other form of human endeavor or knowledge, including hundreds of like acceptances outside of religion you do every single day.

But, on with the request. I offered "evidence", per what a non-biased request in any similar domain would be. Is this qualifying for you?

As for evolution, I'm not sure why you are bringing that up. Most theists accept evolution, including myself, except in the narrow sense that you need to equivocate the meaning to, but which happens to also be completely untestable and unscientific, that is, "only evolution occurs". As an advocate of science, of course I reject that usage, as an implied exhaustive explanation of origins, as everyone actually following science (including the principle of falsifiability) must.

I think you'd need to clarify a few terms here, to continue. But, if not, no real need for us to--your outcome of becoming gone and irrelevant, along with all your arguments, is inevitable, as we'd both agree from either of our respective worldviews.

(Based on its static pages. Haven't been able to search yet.)

A while ago I saw another Christian general search engine (I forget the URL). I tried a few searches on it, and it was absolutely pathetic. The results could not have been less relevant if they tried! That is deeply disturbing to me, as I believe that we as Christians should should aim for excellence in all that we do.

It looks like this Seekfind will be different in that it doesn't aim to be a general search engine. I could see some value in that, if you're looking for thoughts on specific Bible passages or whatnot from a Christian perspective. I suspect that users who use Seekfind for that would have no trouble using Google for everything else, so there is no need to claim that they are "sheltered".

However, what disturbs me about Seekfind is its apparent narrowness in what they deem as "Christian-enough." Apparently they will not index sites that describe end-times from an amillennial perspective -- which is the most widely held view in all of Christendom (not American fundamentalism), and they won't consider infant baptism (as we in the Presbyterian Church do) or even believers' baptism by sprinkling. What the? It would be much more valuable if I could find commentaries from various Christian perspectives.

I'm looking forward to searching them for creation apologist material. From a comment above it looks like they only cover the young earth think tanks. I bet there won't be any results from reasons.org, which IMHO has a much saner interpretation of Creation (they argue that the Big Bang is fully compatible with a literal reading of the Bible).

Some astrophysicists from reasons.org (with an old-earth creationist view) discuss the Hawking announcement in a recent podcast: Science News Flash

That's true about most young earth creationists and the wider ID community.

There is an organization called Reasons to Believe whose mission is to produce a scientifically testable/falsifiable model for Biblical creationism, from an old earth perspective.

They believe that God designed the universe for the maximum benefit of human civilization and to fulfill God's purposes for the universe as quickly and efficiently as possible, and build a model on that. For example, to sustain civilization, humans need 4 billion years of biodeposits. RTB predicts that life appears on earth as quickly as could possibly be allowed under the conditions, and that is what we see. There is evidence of life existing 3.8 billion years ago, just millions of years after the Late Heavy Bombardment. A way to falsify this would be to show that life emerged over hundreds of millions of years, as most evolutionists have tended to assume.

They also predict that future observations in astronomy will show more and more evidence of the fine-tuning of the universe.

Another prediction is that since humans are created specially in God's image, there should be no clear genetic links with hominids. It also explains the sudden burst of such things as advanced tool use, jewelry, and religious artifacts on the scene about 50,000 years ago.

They have a lot more predictions, many of which are articulated in their book "Creation as Science" by Hugh Ross.

According to http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/methane_and_life_on_mars.shtml The methane is broken down by UV.

Methane has a short residence time in the Martian atmosphere (about 350 years) due to its photolytic breakdown by the Sun's UV radiation.

Check out this article. It should be quite accessible for you. I agree with most of it, except for the bit in the beginning about macroevolution (I have no problem with macroevolution).

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/other_papers/animal_death_before_the_fall.shtml

What say I?

First off, using longer words doesn't improve your argument. It is sometimes effective in obfuscating your lack of understanding, but not here.

Starting with your first link - how is this relevant? There is no mention of God or the great noodly FSM. People came close to death and had something resembling a memory with certain factors in common, which isn't surprising since they had a rather traumatic experience in common.

Now, your next link which proclaims that the bible has predicted things that then came true. There's a number of "probability" next to each of these, but this completely fails as a proper comparison of the Bible's predictive qualities.

1) there's no information present to indicate which arsehole the numbers where pulled out of, or what information could possibly be used to substantiate it.

2) There's no mention of the predictions that, in fact, did NOT come true demonstrably.

3) Lastly, this completely ignores the fact that highly improbable things happen every single day, simply because so much actually happens. A quick google search returns this page, quoted: "To use probability to decide between two alternatives requires a comparison of the probabilities of each alternative. Simply saying that one has low probability without calculating the probability for the other is inadequate. "

Moving on to your last link - some information about who was crucified for their Christian faith. Again, what is the relevance? The number of people that died here apparently is paled by the number of people willingly sacrificed in Central America. Is that to say that now you believe in the animal-headed Aztec gods, rather than your angy white guy in pajamas? Or do you prefer to follow the likes of Jim Jones? Lots of people died there, too. Rather recently, and the deaths are well documented!

Sorry, but once you leave the land of the demonstrable, repeatable Sciences, you enter the domain of that which can never be known, since the number of bullshit answers rises exponentially with the number of people involved in the discussion. You can't even consistently get two Christians to agree on whether there is one god or three! And because we've left behind stuff like actual EVIDENCE, there is no way to demonstrate either way!

However, Christians most definitely hate to discuss the anthropological evidence supporting that their angry guy in pajamas is actually an ideological derivation of the ancient Egyptian god of war. (EG: the burning bush, etc) Nor do they like to discuss the fact that ancient Egyptian culture was markedly different than the slavery depicted as Noah left Egypt. They were good to their women, they had slaves but they weren't generally mistreated, the Egyptian religion is based around Ma'at which is actually very similar to the "heaven/hell" scenario for Christianity. In fact, there's basically no evidence at all to support these ideas. And you can't use the Bible as a historical reference without also mentioning similar works like the Q'uran. The Q'uran has a reference to Noah, for example, but it's rather markedly different than what your Bible teaches.

So why would you trust your Bible over the Q'uran? And would you want to? More food for thought: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkXOwBIRX7Y if you're brave enough to watch it.

Fair enough. Let's start the first round of discussion by you proposing your quantifiables on the Flying Spaghetti Monster's stats regarding him specifically being reported as percieved as a structured sensory phenomenon during EEG flatline, as documented in peer-reviewed studies, like the following: http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm Your broad estimates as to the Flying Spaghetti Monster's success at predicting future events (feel free to use some previous incarnation of said pasta to allow for at least one non-trivial "predicted-1-year-ahead" example on your part, and feel free to reduce the proposed improbability estimated by the following link by a millionfold before we begin): http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/prophecy.shtml And preferably, a listing of those living first-hand during the formation of the FSM belief, thus having direct testimonial standing, who have been willingly martyred in support of their experience (I'm taking volunteers, BTW): http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?apostles.htm Seems like a decent set of criteria to evaluate the relative plausibility by. What say you?

Your question is too simplistic, and while I will likely get modded to hell for posting this link, it should give you several good references to begin answering your basic questions. (Just do a "find" in the article and type 'temp' to quickly find the references to factors related to temperature fluctuations and how they would affect life on earth.) http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/design_evidences/200406_fine_tuning_for_life_on_earth.shtml

As others have noted, astrology makes ongoing (daily, typically), specific predictions. Those predictions consistently fail.

It would appear that certain religions have an arguably better record.

Gods are created by peoples from time to time to suit their own contemporary social needs; it's simply not possible that one can have existential primacy over others.

Unless, of course, your claim to personal omniscience as to the exhaustive basis of all religions historically and what is "not possible" aside--one has a clear distinction in terms of predictive success, peer-reviewed correspondence with existential phenomena, and/or direct demonstration via a methodology you haven't and won't try.

If one truly keeps an open mind and lets the evidence speak for itself, the more one learns about the universe, the more one should sees how improbable life is. By one calculation, that figure is 1 chance in 10^-282. Citation: Reasons to Believe"

Good points. I wish we could all get back to actually applying the scientific method, and put the rabid creationism *and* evolutionism on the shelf. In the end, the conclusions would be:

Regarding Creationism:
a) Things did not appear on the earth according to the "young earth" interpretation of the Bible. The earth is indeed very old! You don't have to throw your brain away to believe in the Bible, you just have to realize that there is more than one interpretation to the Genesis account.
b) Just because someone believes that God ultimately created everything, it doesn't mean they are against science. Pure science doesn't even bring God into the equation, and it shouldn't.

Regarding Evolutionism:
a) Evolution does not adquately explain how living things came to be, let alone how the earth and universe came into being.
b) The universe is not old enough to support evolution. There are too many variables to consider, and it can be mathematically proven: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/desig n_evidences/200404_probabilities_for_life_on_earth .shtml

In the end, those who believe in God do not have to fear the discoveries of science, since they *do* ultimately point to a Designer.

Those who believe only in science should be satisfied that they are sticking to their chosen path and not get offended if there are others who believe in something more!

"With the creation model approach every scientific idea is encouraged to participate in this process to see which theory best fits the emerging data," says Dr. Rana. "With this cutting edge program, where advancing scientific discoveries determine which model's predictions are successful, no philosophical or religious perspective is denied access."

"While many scientists are of the opinion that science and faith don't mix," continues Dr. Hugh Ross, "the team of scientists at Reasons To Believe is dedicated to reaching the scientific community with the understanding that science and Scripture firmly support and even help advance one another. After all, science is the search for truth. We must be willing to follow the trail of evidence wherever it leads."

http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/2001issue05/i ndex.shtml#virus_argument

I checked out NCSE. it appears to have only the purpose of trying to make creation/ID proponents look to be wrong and have no facts to back up their "outrageous" claims. it even has sections in training people like you in how to make someone look bad with out any reasoning.

However, if you would like to view a site that actually has information to back up it's claims, visit reasons.org, and see how much of it you can debunk... although i now know that the ncse site will not help you at all seeing as though thats what i was trying to do, to see if ncse supplies any facts to debunk the things that this site uses to further prove the existence of a creator that transcends space and time.

http://www.reasons.org/ reasons.org

this group by the way is opposed to ID being taught in public schools.
they do not believe the earth is 6,000 years old
they believe the dinosaurs died out 65million years ago and that humans have been on the earth for ~50,000 years

just to give you some insight to their beliefs

The co-inventor of Fullerenes and Nobel Prize winner
in Chemistry, Dr. Richard Smalley, rejected evolution
and championed the theory of Intelligent Design. The
following is a link containing the remarks of Dr. Hugh
Ross at Richard Smalley's memorial service:

http://www.reasons.org/about/staff/richard_smalley _funeral.shtml

The "unamed" Nobel Laureate in the following article is
Smalley:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/ 160

For background on Dr. Hugh Ross see here:

  http://www.reasons.org/about/staff/ross.shtml

Any time the subject of Intelligent Design comes up here
on Slashdot we are bombarded by people who insist that
Intelligent Design is only for stupid people who are
not "real" scientists. The above two are very much real
scientists and are only two of thousands of real scientists
around the world who see Intelligent Design as the most
plauseable, and scientifically correct view of humans,
the earth, and the cosmos.

The co-inventor of Fullerenes and Nobel Prize winner
in Chemistry, Dr. Richard Smalley, rejected evolution
and championed the theory of Intelligent Design. The
following is a link containing the remarks of Dr. Hugh
Ross at Richard Smalley's memorial service:

http://www.reasons.org/about/staff/richard_smalley _funeral.shtml

The "unamed" Nobel Laureate in the following article is
Smalley:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/ 160

For background on Dr. Hugh Ross see here:

  http://www.reasons.org/about/staff/ross.shtml

Any time the subject of Intelligent Design comes up here
on Slashdot we are bombarded by people who insist that
Intelligent Design is only for stupid people who are
not "real" scientists. The above two are very much real
scientists and are only two of thousands of real scientists
around the world who see Intelligent Design as the most
plauseable, and scientifically correct view of humans,
the earth, and the cosmos.

Good article here on that subject.

>>> The problem with intelligent design is not that it is implausible, but that it is completely untestable.

Are you familiar with an organization called Reasons to Believe? Their primary goal is to make a scientifically testable model of Creation, specifically as the Bible puts it, from an old earth creation perspective. You may be interested in browsing some of their articles. They publish a book called "Origins of Life" which lays out their model as it relates to earth's early life. A new one called "Who was Adam" looks at their model regarding the origin of humanity.

I agree that ID is untestable in a general sense, but the Bible makes claims that really can be put to the test. One interesting example is in cosmology. The Bible contains repeated declarations by many authors over more than a thousand years that 1) everything that exists had a beginning a finite amount of time ago, and 2) the heavens have been expanding. This is completely incompatible with the "eternal universe" theory that used to be popular, However, that theory has been disproven and now the dominant theory is the Big Bang, which I believe fits what the Bible says to a T. (It simply stuns the heck out of me that most North American Christians try to downplay the Big Bang!)

>>> That's just because such "theories" either ignore any inconvenient facts, or revise the "theory of Creation" so that it is impossible to disprove (and then pretend that's what the "theory" said all along). Eventually, they can say (like you did) that their theory has been stable longer than the physically-testable theories, and is therefore somehow "better".

That is exactly NOT what Reasons to Believe does. They put out materials specifically intended to make Creation testable just like any other scientific theory. Their book Origins of Life does a great job of this I think.

>>> much like the fanatics who insist that the Bible is the literal truth say that their "ever-truthful" God created the world thousands of years ago, complete with all the physical evidence that makes us think it is billions of years old.

The young earth movement bases this faith on an interpretation of the Bible which, unfortunately, has permeated most of the North American church. It is based on a hyper-literal interpretation of Genesis using a select subset of allowable definitions for various Hebrew words, and I believe it is absolutely inconsistent with the Bible's message as a whole. The Bible contains dozens of passages with Creation information, not just in Genesis, and a serious interpretation of what it says must take them all consistently. I believe that such a consistent interpretation does not even allow for the reasonability of the young earth model, for Scriptural reasons alone.

Take for example Palm 19:1-2. It tells us that what we see in the heavens is what God actually did. They display knowledge. What we can see is objective reality. Young earthers must say that the light from galaxies billions of light years away must have been created in transit -- flatly contradicting this Psalm!

I might also point out that this is one of the things that made Europe in the 1600s-1700s progress so much farther scientifically than other civilizations before them. These Europeans had a Christian worldview that taught them that the world is objective reality. Other cultures made some scientific progress, but it was crippled by views like astrology, beliefs in various gods that could arbitrarily change anything, etc.

"If there were a lot of different natural laws, or a slightly different unfolding in the first few seconds of the universe or something, other creatures would live there and say "wow, it looks like this universe was tailor made for us"."

Being a good scientist, you have evidence to support this claim, right?

The only universe we have evidence of is the one we live in, so it is improper logic to assume that other universes exist, or even could exist. It is demonstrable that given the laws of physics we experience in this universe, the physical constants (gravitational constant, mass of the universe, universe's expansion rate, etc.) must be the values that they are to within a ridiculously small percentage for there to be any life anywhere in the universe. Also, it can be demonstrated that only through a series of remarkable "coincidences" has there been made a planet which advanced life can survive and even thrive on. See the book Rare Earth, and several books by Dr. Hugh Ross for such demonstrations.

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/desig n.shtml?main

Personally, I believe that the latest findings in science should be taught, however it should not be presented as *cough* gospel truth. It should be very clear to students that this is still an area where new discoveries are being made and we do not have a 100% reliable model for the way life developed.

>>> Well, gee that good and all but here's the question. What if there is no God? Now you just wasted your life believing in that BS.

My life is fine, thank you. And I'm not really concerned about that possibility. I think there are plenty of good reasons to believe in the God of the Bible.

He does go into more detail in some of the papers he references, but they're on similarly shaky ground.

The paper The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields contains a number of faith-based a priori assumptions. To wit:

To calculate the magnetic moment of a planet at creation, we must know the original material. In the previous article I presented Scriptural evidence that God originally created the Earth as a sphere of pure water.

The paper then proceeds from this assumption, calculating the magnetic moment of water, and so on.

You could proceed logically from such a questionable assumption, and come out with an equally questionable result. At least that would give you "if you accept premise A, I can show you that B is correct". However, there is more heavenly interference going on (I'll be adding my own italics - they're not in the original, of course):

All the magnetic moments cancel out, so that water normally has no net magnetic moment of its own. However, God was under no requirement to create the water molecules in their normal order. For example, He could have created all the molecules with their proton magnetic moments lined up in a given direction, producing the maximum magnetic moment possible from the protons. Or, He could have lined up the protons of the third ortho group (Figure 4(D)) along the field axis. Figure 5 shows this order. This would produce a field having one-fourth of the maximum strength with a minimum of deviation from the normal order. I do not know from Scripture what proportion of the protons God aligned in each case. In the previous article I put an arbitrary factor, k, into the equations. This alignment factor represents what fraction' of the maximum field God chose.

So, not only do we have to take on assumption that the earth started out as a sphere of water, but that, contrary to the current laws of physics, God is artificially aligning the water molecules to create a magnetic field.

The earth starting out as a sphere of water would presuppose as well that either the water can turn into rock (if you can find it, you can follow into his similarly-styled paper on "Is The Earth's Core Water?" - looks like it may only be in paper form or for subscribers only), or attract rock from nearby space (which would throw off the initial masses considerably - and which it doesn't look like he's promoting).

I would reiterate: the creationists are not being scientifically discriminated against, they're invoking supernatural powers to create just the right starting conditions and occasionally interfering with their development in order to arrive at the right already-measured values. That is not scientific, because it can never be proved wrong; the conditions and interference can be changed to suit.

I will actually levy the same charge against the current crop of cosmologists as well. They have made their theories so flexible that they can tweak knobs on equations at will, which means that it has lost nearly all predictive power.

The exchanges between Humphreys and Ross are pretty interesting :) Ross' side of the storm can be found at Reasons to Believe. Humphreys' side is peppered into numerous headlines at the ICR.

I'm inclined to believe Ross' reasons for reticence; ICR-sponsored debaters are known for being charismatic, picking the venue for maximum layman and supporter audience attendance, and coming with a well-prepared slick presentation and pitch, which their opponents, expecting an actual debate, come off as being boring, pedantic, and constantly on the defence. Ross has the right to be scared of that. Moderated debates, such as those on radio and television, do much better, and that goes as much for political debates.

Cheers, Eric

-- Ritchie

We can go on forever back and forward on this topic between ID and creationism. But most people here talk about what they think is true just by faith because they dont know the facts. There're facts for both sides of the story, is one of them the truth? Or maybe both are true? humm... let Google be your guide. A good place to start: http://reasons.org/ (God and science)

In the end, it was rather ridiculous. There were many people there and over 90% of them were over 50. Apparently, he was trying to start a chapter of his group in the city. Anyway, he wouldn't answer any questions from us youngsters, which left me feeling like I just wasted 2 hours of my time. In the end I was really offended by the man. He was a published astronomer, so as a man of science he must know how ridiculous these arguments are. He's abusing the public's ignorance of science and a yearning for proof of God's existence to advance his beliefs.

Here's how he started his talk:

"Who came up with the big bang theory: Einstein, Hawking, Araham, or Moses? Actually, there's some debate over whether Moses or Abraham was first, so both of those are correct." The man was saying that the big bang theory is in the Bible! If you need proof of twisting an idea, this is it. The school board in Dover is no different. Espousing a scientific theory that hasn't passed muster through the well-established journal peer-review system is an affront to science. I don't mind them believing in it or teaching it to their own children, but don't force it on me and mine.

At work, so no time to read most posts right now, but I do want to point out that there are numerous problems with the naturalistic model for origins of life. If you want to learn about them, there is a book called Origins of Life, by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross. This is not your daddy's creationist material. It is a recent book (published last year) with a lot of references to recent scientific discoveries.

Intelligent Design should be mentioned as a valid model, because there really is evidence for it. I'm not saying it should be taught as a science, but it certainly has its place.

There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding of the term "intelligent design" here.

It is not a fundamentalist belief that the earth was literally created in 6 days about 14,000 year ago or whatever.

Intelligent design, from my understanding, is the belief that the natural laws of physics and chemistry and biology, that we understand through the ideas of science, such as the theory of evolution were the forces that God used to shape our universe to the way it is so that humans would exist (not excluding other life forms elsewhere, that is merely an unknown).
An advocate of intelligent design spoke at my church a few years ago, and my parents encouraged me to attend his talk with them. I went expecting some spaz proclaiming the usual battle of God vs. scientific thinking and was pleased to find someone speaking of them as ideas that are in no way mutually exclusive (since we can't forseeably scientifically prove or disprove the existance of God). His name was Dr. Hugh Ross, and he's an astrophysicist or cosmologist at Berkley or something like that.
He and his buddies have a website, http://www.reasons.org/ or something like that, if you want to hear them rant about the latest science and how they see it relating to issues of faith.

Anyway, the one thing that both scientists and religious people need is a nice dose of humility. Evolution, to us, was taught as fact, not theory, and that's BS, at least partially. Likewise, religious people should be satisfied with science taught with humility, and should butt out so long as teachers are doing a good job of teaching kids about scientific ideas and theories in an honest way. Creationism discussion can occur in classes about religions, not science classes.

Or at least that's how I see it.

28" 'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

Actually, a testable hypothesis of life's origins as predicted by the Bible (in an old earth creationist context) vs. the assumptions of naturalistic evolution is precisely the subject of the excellent book Origins of Life, just published last year and containing fairly up-to-date info. This is NOT your daddy's creationist drivel.

> A bigger "leap of faith" than a supernatural all powerful entitiy that controls and pushes everything through a divine plan?

Actually, yes. The universe is fine tuned to many, many orders of magnitude greater than the best possible human engineering. If any physical constants were different by one part in ten to the umpteenth power, no life of any form could have existed at any time or place in the universe.

If you want to read books, I highly recommend these two:

Origins of Life takes a good look at how life appeared on early earth -- and compares predictions based on the naturalistic model vs. what we should expect if the God of the Bible created life. It points out that life appeared rather quickly after the end of the late great bombardment, and appeared suddenly. It looks at the lack of evidence for the prebiotic soup that the naturalistic model needs. And lots of other issues!

Creator and the Cosmos looks at the extreme fine-tunedness of the universe.

I'm not saying God could not have used evolution; maybe He did in some cases (though I tend to prefer special creation of various species over the eons). But to put your faith in the naturalistic model is a MUCH bigger stretch than believing in the God of the Bible. Especially since we as Christians see His hand not only in the formation of the universe, but at work in peoples' lives and around the world today. :)

> A bigger "leap of faith" than a supernatural all powerful entitiy that controls and pushes everything through a divine plan?

Actually, yes. The universe is fine tuned to many, many orders of magnitude greater than the best possible human engineering. If any physical constants were different by one part in ten to the umpteenth power, no life of any form could have existed at any time or place in the universe.

If you want to read books, I highly recommend these two:

Origins of Life takes a good look at how life appeared on early earth -- and compares predictions based on the naturalistic model vs. what we should expect if the God of the Bible created life. It points out that life appeared rather quickly after the end of the late great bombardment, and appeared suddenly. It looks at the lack of evidence for the prebiotic soup that the naturalistic model needs. And lots of other issues!

Creator and the Cosmos looks at the extreme fine-tunedness of the universe.

I'm not saying God could not have used evolution; maybe He did in some cases (though I tend to prefer special creation of various species over the eons). But to put your faith in the naturalistic model is a MUCH bigger stretch than believing in the God of the Bible. Especially since we as Christians see His hand not only in the formation of the universe, but at work in peoples' lives and around the world today. :)

What's weirder is that IMAX theaters normally are *in* science museums. You'd think that the Fundies wouldn't set foot in such "ungodly" places and that the people who do go are those interested in science.

There is quite a bit of unjust discrimination in the previous comment. Not all Fundamentals are completely ignorant of science. Many Fundamentals are very interested in science. The problem lies in the uneducated masses that take the words of their pastors/bishops/priests are the words of God. Accepting a view of science from someone who has little scientific knowledge. It truely saddens me that statement could be said honestly by someone.

Within the Christian Community this is a major debate and science is a top issue. Many (ultra) conservative scientists such as Ken Ham hold a young earth creationists view. Where as Old Earth creationists take a view that much better harmonizes the Bible and science. Hugh Ross is the leading scientist with a very interesting research on Astrophysics.

..."the left team"? (-:

Anyway, computers didn't evolve, they were progressively created. Hugh Ross must be fairly happy about that.

If you accept the Bible as truth, and

If you accept the literal read of Genesis, God went from null to reality in 168 hours, then

Any other explanation triggers a buffer overflow, allowing arbitrary doctrine to execute in the service (and boy, does some of that doctrine get arbitrary).

Furthermore, allowing unsupervised evolution into the dialogue is the first step towards atheism. Life can be (foolishly) seen as a vast, extended chemical reaction of vague origin and uncertain destination.

Taking the purely Darwinian route, for me, seems to come up nihilism. All statements go relative, and subjective. How do we differentiate between Stalin and Ghandi?
Now, maybe my life experience, which heavy exposure to Paul Tillich makes me a wierd duck; I read Genesis as a true, but poetic, qualitative abstract of the implementation. God taking it easy on the wet-ware. I don't think the sum of human knowledge more than the tip of the iceberg. And I look forward to a full debrief in the afterlife, when it might be possible to grasp all.
So, while all real instances of Christianity are quite open to criticism, I still haven't heard anyone mount a bulletproof attack against Christ, argued through the Gospels.
Remember, Jesus was a Jew, and have a nice day.

The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.

Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.

By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.

For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.

A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.

The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.

Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.

Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.

It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.

The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.

I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.

Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him

Not all Christians have problems with modern cosmology. In fact, we embrace it.

http://www.reasons.org/

Evolution, OTOH, is just not convincing on it's own merits. I find special creation easier to believe than the spontaneous natural generation of life. Too much irreduceable complexity in the celluar machinery. Too many chicken-and-egg problems. The field of origins research has only progressed in recent decades by demonstrating that the popular theories are wrong, with no convincing alternative. No pre-biotic soup on Earth, etc.

A theory is a theory well accepted or otherwise. It has not been proven, and therefore remains subject to skepticism. Regardless of it's acceptance, it still remains to be proven. That applies for both arguments.

Creation may not be a scientific theory, true, but there is a theory that creationists have about the origins of life, based on a scientific model. In fact, you'll find that most Christians who have anything to do with science (see here and here) tend to believe in the big bang, and that the universe is in fact billions of years of old.

As for your argument about evolution not happening today, and considering the Christian doctrine, we could say they have a right to say it ended; after all according to Christianity creation happened over seven days (days not necessarily being a 24 hour period, but rather an undefined length of finite time), it would have stopped at that point on a grand scale (creating new species, but now mutation within the species). However, this may not be the case as you have pointed out that we have proof of evolution today.

I should apologize for using evolution generically, I should say that the argument should be Creation vs. non-creation theories. I applaud your argument; quite the rebuttal to anyone who attacks evolution.

I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".

You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.

Probability of a Life Support Body

As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.

Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...

The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.

I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.

The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!

Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.

When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.

I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".

You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.

Probability of a Life Support Body

As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.

Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...

The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.

I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.

The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!

Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.

When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.

I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".

You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.

Probability of a Life Support Body

As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.

Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...

The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.

I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.

The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!

Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.

When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.

I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".

You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.

Probability of a Life Support Body

As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.

Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...

The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.

I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.

The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!

Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.

When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.

[A]strophysicists have a good understanding of the development of the universe only as far back as 10^-34 seconds after the (apparent) singular creation event. What happens before, therefore, remains an open question...This unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence-a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What "tells" the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to law, a logic that exists prior to space and time.

Christians generally don't have a problem with life on mars, or anywhere else for that matter. Belief in the work of the Christ, and theories about exactly how and when things came into being are pretty independent of eachother.

Please don't confuse the term "Luddite Maniac" with "Christian".