All Religions are not Equal

[foraker]

You'd better get started then. We're waiting. You are engaging in what is known as 'science by assertion', i.e. "I say it is so, therefore it must be". If you're going to buck the conventional wisdom, you're going to have to do better than that. Maybe just give us three or four fully substantiated counter examples for evolution. That shouldn't be beyond your abilities, correct. Or are the pre-Socratics beyond your abilities as well?

 

Why? you will not beleive it, may not even read it.

 

According to evolutionary theory, starting with the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and the simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases, the universe created itself. This is clearly a violation of natural law, namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to this law an isolated system can never increase in order and complexity, transforming itself to higher and higher levels of organization. An isolated system will inevitably, with time, run down, becoming more and more disorderly. There are no exceptions. Contrary to this natural law, evolutionists believe the universe is an isolated system which transformed itself from the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases into the incredibly complex universe we have today. This is a direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If natural laws are natural laws, the universe could not have created itself. The only alternative is that it is not an isolated system. There must be a Creator that is external to and independent of the natural universe who was responsible for its origin and who created the natural laws that govern its operation.

 

I can read this well enough to know you don't understand science very well.

[ClimbingPanther]

But most of all you need to inspire kids to think proactively and to find out the answers through constant inquisitiveness, not through authoritarian dictatorship.

 

You're right on. When was the last time you felt God breathing down your neck like some sort of cosmic Chairman Mao? He is certainly not micromanaging your every thought and action. That's what people try to do.

 

Speaking, of course, under the assumption that the Bible is correct, there have been times when God was much more physically apparent, even in the flesh as a man, performing miracles no man could reproduce, and people STILL didn't believe.

God knows we'll believe what we want to believe and is not unjust in keeping a lower profile than we would like him to.

 

For interested parties, "Finding God in the Questions" is a seemingly (I'm not finished yet) well written book that addresses many of these issues far more eloquently and critically than the average trite response.

[Seahawks]

C. Evolution didn't happen in the past.

 

When we look at the record of life in the past, we see no conclusive evidence that any basic category arose from some other category either. We see that some categories have gone extinct, like the dinosaurs, but the rest fit into the same categories that we see today. We see dogs in great variety, even some extinct varieties, but no half dog/half something else. Evolutionists have a few transitional forms that are commonly mentioned, but if evolution and descent from common ancestors really occurred we should see multiplied thousands of transitional forms. We do not see them.

 

The most famous living evolutionary spokesman, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, paleontologist at Harvard University, has made a career out of pointing out to his colleagues that the fossil record shows abrupt appearance and stasis. He is no friend of creation and yet as an honest scientist he must acknowledge this now well-known fact. He proposed the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" to account for the fossils in which life usually is in equilibrium, or stasis, and doesn't change at all. When a category of life encounters a sudden environmental shift, it changes rapidly into a different stable form, so rapidly in fact that it leaves no fossils. How convenient. Evolution goes too slow to see in the present, but it went so fast in the past it left no evidence. Gould is arguing from lack of evidence!

 

But lack of transitional forms is exactly what should be the case if creation is true. The fossil record supports abrupt creation of basic kinds much better than either slow or fast evolution.

 

 

[Seahawks]

D. Evolution can't happen at all.

 

The basic laws of science are firmly opposed to evolution, especially The Second Law of Thermodynamics which insists that all real processes yield less organization and information in their products than in the original. This basic law leads to de-volution, not evolution. The presence of abundant external energy has never, as far as science has observed, produced beneficial mutations or added information to the genome as evolutionists claim. Instead, an abundance of incoming energy will hasten the deterioration of living things, especially the DNA. It will not bring about their evolution. Evolution is against the Law!

 

Evolution doesn't happen, didn't happen and can't happen, and is fully unable to account for the design that we see.

 

We've all heard the claim that "evolution is science and creation is religion." This oft-repeated mantra originated with the testimony of Dr. Michael Ruse at the 1980 Arkansas creation trial. The presiding judge, known for his prior bias toward evolution, entered it into his formal opinion, and this flag has been waved by evolutionists ever since. But Dr. Ruse, an expert on the nature of science and scientific theory has recently admitted that he was wrong-that "evolution is promulgated by its practitioners as . . . a religion, a full-fledged alternative to Christianity. . . . Evolution is a religion."

[foraker]

We're still waiting for the data that supports your cut-and-paste 'arguments' that lack proper references.

[sexual_chocolate]

You are much more comfortable regurgitating someone else's arguments than actually creating your own, aren't you?

 

yes yes it's truly irritating, trying to discuss soemthing with someone who selectively responds only to those points which someone has provided them with something posing as an argument.

[StevenSeagal]

A. Random forces cannot account for life.

 

Any more than I cannot prove this false, can you prove this to be true? You are stating it as fact.

 

Surely some things need a Designer/Author.

 

Some things, yes. Maybe man, even. But beyond that possibility, why does the existence of a creator necessarily dictate HOW we are SUPPOSED to be living our lives? "Free will" again seems to drive humans to do nefarious things to other humans. Most of all, it's often used for control. The theories of organized religion are quite obviously grounded in controlling how others think and behave. Is it just at all possible that the organized religions of humans are all nothing more than cultural-based suppositions that have nothing in common with our origin? The development of these belief systems was not something that happened mysteriously- they are evolution in action, really.

[Seahawks]

II. Evolution is a complete worldview.

 

Evolution is the religion of naturalism, the antithesis of supernaturalism. It purports to answer all the "big" questions of life. "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" "Where am I going?" "What's the meaning of all this?" Claiming that science equals naturalism excludes a Creator from science by definition. Even if that Creator exists and has been active, such a notion is unscientific. This religion of naturalism, that we are merely the result of blind random forces is logically compatible only with atheism. It has resulted in life without accountability to a Creator and has led to a licentious society full of great heartache, for evolution thinking underpins racism, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, promiscuity, divorce, suicide, Social Darwinism, etc. While science and technology have accomplished great things, often by evolution believers, the concept of evolution itself has lead to nothing useful.

 

[foraker]

References and data please. Still waiting....

[Seahawks]

References and data please. Still waiting....

 

He probably little smarter than you.

 

A Few Reasons an Evolutionary Origin of Life Is Impossible (#403)

by Duane Gish, Ph.D.*

There were no human witnesses to the origin of life, and no physical geological evidence of its origin exists. Speaking of the origin of a hypothetical self-replicating molecule and its structure, Pross has recently admitted that "The simple answer is we do not know, and we may never know."1 Later, concerning the question of the origin of such a molecule, Pross said, ". . . one might facetiously rephrase the question as follows: given an effectively unknown reaction mixture, under effectively unknown reaction conditions, reacting to give unknown products by unknown mechanisms, could a particular product with a specific characteristic . . . have been included amongst the reaction products?"2 That pretty well summarizes the extent of the progress evolutionists have made toward establishing a mechanistic, atheistic scenario for the origin of life after more than half a century of physical, chemical, and geological research. It is possible, however, to derive facts that establish beyond doubt that an evolutionary origin of life on this planet would have been impossible. The origin of life could only have resulted from the action of an intelligent agent external to and independent of the natural universe. There is sufficient space here to describe only a few of the insuperable barriers to an evolutionary origin of life.

 

1. The absence of the required atmosphere.

 

Our present atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen (N2), 21% molecular oxygen (O2), and 1% of other gases, such as carbon dioxide CO2), argon (Ar), and water vapor H2O). An atmosphere containing free oxygen would be fatal to all origin of life schemes. While oxygen is necessary for life, free oxygen would oxidize and thus destroy all organic molecules required for the origin of life. Thus, in spite of much evidence that the earth has always had a significant quantity of free oxygen in the atmosphere,3 evolutionists persist in declaring that there was no oxygen in the earth's early atmosphere. However, this would also be fatal to an evolutionary origin of life. If there were no oxygen there would be no protective layer of ozone surrounding the earth. Ozone is produced by radiation from the sun on the oxygen in the atmosphere, converting the diatomic oxygen(O2) we breathe to triatomic oxygen O3), which is ozone. Thus if there were no oxygen there would be no ozone. The deadly destructive ultraviolet light from the sun would pour down on the surface of the earth unimpeded, destroying those organic molecules required for life, reducing them to simple gases, such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water. Thus, evolutionists face an irresolvable dilemma: in the presence of oxygen, life could not evolve; without oxygen, thus no ozone, life could not evolve or exist.

 

2. All forms of raw energy are destructive.

 

The energy available on a hypothetical primitive Earth would consist primarily of radiation from the sun, with some energy from electrical discharges (lightning), and minor sources of energy from radioactive decay and heat. The problem for evolution is that the rates of destruction of biological molecules by all sources of raw energy vastly exceed their rates of formation by such energy. The only reason Stanley Miller succeeded in obtaining a small amount of products in his experiment was the fact that he employed a trap to isolate his products from the energy source.4 Here evolutionists face two problems. First, there could be no trap available on a primitive Earth. Second, a trap by itself would be fatal to any evolutionary scenario, for once the products are isolated in the trap, no further evolutionary progress is possible, because no energy is available. In his comments on Miller's experiment, D. E. Hull stated that "These short lives for decomposition in the atmosphere or ocean clearly preclude the possibility of accumulating useful concentrations of organic compounds over eons of time. . . . The physical chemist guided by the proved principles of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, cannot offer any encouragement to the biochemist, who needs an ocean full of organic compounds to form even lifeless coacervates."5

 

3. An evolutionary scenario for the origin of life would result in an incredible clutter.

 

Let us suppose that, as evolutionists suggest, there actually was some way for organic, biologically important molecules to have formed in a significant quantity on a primitive Earth. An indescribable mess would have been the result. In addition to the 20 different amino acids found in proteins today, hundreds of other kinds of amino acids would have been produced. In addition to deoxyribose and ribose, the five-carbon sugars found in DNA and RNA today, a variety of other five-carbon sugars, four-carbon, six-carbon, and seven-carbon sugars would have been produced. In addition to the five purines and pyrimidines found in DNA and RNA today, a great variety of other purines and pyrimidines would exist. Further, of vital significance, the amino acids in proteins today are exclusively left-handed, but all amino acids on the primitive Earth would be 50% left-handed and 50% right-handed. The sugars in DNA and RNA today are exclusively right-handed, but, if they did exist, sugars on a primitive Earth would have been 50% right-handed and 50% left-handed. If just one right-handed amino acid is in a protein, or just one left-handed sugar is found in a DNA or RNA, all biological activity is destroyed. There would be no mechanism available on a primitive Earth to select the correct form. This fact alone destroys evolution. Evolutionists have been wrestling with this dilemma since it was first recognized, and there is no solution in sight. All these many varieties would compete with one another, and a great variety of other organic molecules, including aldehydes, ketones, acids, amines, lipids, carbohydrates, etc. would exist. If evolutionists really claim to simulate plausible primitive Earth conditions, why don't they place their reactants in a big mess like this and irradiate it with ultraviolet light, shock it with electric discharges, or heat it, and see what results? They don't do that because they know there wouldn't be the remotest possibility that anything useful for their evolutionary scenario would result. Rather, they carefully select just the starting materials they want to produce amino acids or sugars or purines or whatever, and, furthermore, they employ implausible experimental conditions that would not exist on a primitive Earth. They then claim in textbooks and journal articles that such and such biological molecules would have been produced in abundant quantities on the early earth.

 

4. Micromolecules do not spontaneously combine to form macromolecules.

 

It is said that DNA is the secret of life. DNA is not the secret of life. Life is the secret of DNA. Evolutionists persistently claim that the initial stage in the origin of life was the origin of a self-replicating DNA or RNA molecule. There is no such thing as a self-replicating molecule, and no such molecule could ever exist.The formation of a molecule requires the input of a highly selected type of energy and the steady input of the building blocks required to form it. To produce a protein, the building blocks are amino acids. For DNA and RNA these building blocks are nucleotides, which are composed of purines, pyrimidines, sugars, and phosphoric acid. If amino acids are dissolved in water they do not spontaneously join together to make a protein. That would require an input of energy. If proteins are dissolved in water the chemical bonds between the amino acids slowly break apart, releasing energy (the protein is said to hydrolyze). The same is true of DNA and RNA. To form a protein in a laboratory the chemist, after dissolving the required amino acids in a solvent, adds a chemical that contains high energy bonds (referred to as a peptide reagent). The energy from this chemical is transferred to the amino acids. This provides the necessary energy to form the chemical bonds between the amino acids and releases H and OH to form H2O (water). This only happens in a chemistry laboratory or in the cells of living organisms. It could never have taken place in a primitive ocean or anywhere on a primitive Earth. Who or what would be there to provide a steady input of the appropriate energy? Destructive raw energy would not work. Who or what would be there to provide a steady supply of the appropriate building blocks rather than just junk? In speaking of a self-replicating DNA molecule, evolutionists are reaching for a pie in the sky.

 

5. DNA could not survive without repair mechanisms.

 

DNA, as is true of messenger-RNA, transfer-RNA, and ribosomal-RNA, is destroyed by a variety of agents, including ultraviolet light, reactive oxygen species, alkylting agents, and water. A recent article reported that there are 130 known human DNA repair genes and that more will be found. The authors stated that "Genome |DNA| instability caused by the great variety of DNA-damaging agents would be an overwhelming problem for cells and organisms if it were not for DNA repair emphasis mine)."6 Note that even water is one of the agents that damages DNA! If DNA somehow evolved on the earth it would be dissolved in water. Thus water and many chemical agents dissolved in it, along with ultraviolet light would destroy DNA much faster than it could be produced by the wildest imaginary process. If it were not for DNA repair genes, the article effectively states, DNA could not survive even in the protective environment of a cell! How then could DNA survive when subjected to brutal attack by all the chemical and other DNA-damaging agents that would exist on the hypothetical primitive Earth of the evolutionists?

 

What are the cellular agents that are necessary for DNA repair and survival? DNA genes! Thus, DNA is necessary for the survival of DNA! But it would have been impossible for DNA repair genes to evolve before ordinary DNA evolved and it would have been impossible for ordinary DNA to evolve before DNA repair genes had evolved. Here we see another impossible barrier for evolution. Furthermore, it is ridiculous to imagine that DNA repair genes could have evolved even if a cell existed. DNA genes encode the sequences of the hundreds of amino acids that constitute the proteins that are the actual agents that are involved in DNA repair. The code in the DNA is translated into a messenger RNA (mRNA). The mRNA must then move to and be incorporated into a ribosome (which is made up of three different ribosomal RNAs and 55 different protein molecules). Each amino acid must be coupled to a transfer RNA specific for that amino acid, and the coupling requires a protein enzyme specific for that amino acid and transfer-RNA. Responding to the code on the messenger RNA and utilizing the codes on transfer RNA's, the appropriate amino acids, attached to the transfer RNAs, are attached to the growing protein chain in the order prescribed by the code of the messenger RNA. Many enzymes are required along with appropriate energy. This is only a brief introduction to the incredible complexity of life that is found even in a bacterium.

 

[minx]

ahh then, mr. creationist, who/what created the creator? if there is a creator, who has become so disgusted with us that it doesn't spend much time 'round these parts anymore, then we are in fact nothing more than abandoned action figures in a child's backyard game. much like the little army figures that my son and his friends play with, get bored with, and leave for another day. do you really believe that we are the toys in something's game?

[minx]

Duane Gish, PhD?

 

Doctor of what?

 

Where was this published? Again, peer reviewed journals would be nice.

 

"probably smarter than you" perhaps smarter than me, perhaps not.

 

A PhD doesn't not really ensure "smart" and certainly not common sense. Seahawks I'd also remind you that there are plenty of smart people who post here including some PhDs and PhD wannabes. Where's gary when we really need him to be smart?

[Seahawks]

ahh then, mr. creationist, who/what created the creator? if there is a creator, who has become so disgusted with us that it doesn't spend much time 'round these parts anymore, then we are in fact nothing more than abandoned action figures in a child's backyard game. much like the little army figures that my son and his friends play with, get bored with, and leave for another day. do you really believe that we are the toys in something's game?

 

Sorry, he made me do it. Like there isn't other theories out there that are just as good.

 

But your question is very good. I think about that all the time too. I think the only reason he lets it continue is that he doesn't want to destroy us, Out of his love he wants to give us all the opportunity time allows.

 

 

[foraker]

In case you're confused:

 

This is an example of data:

 

 

This is an example of a scientific reference:

 

 

Griffiths, R.W. and Campbell, I.H. Interaction of mantle plume heads with the Earth's surface and onset of small-scale convection. J. Geophys. Res. 96(B11): 18,295-18,310.

 

 

 

 

 

[sexual_chocolate]

In 2002 Massimo Pigliucci, who debated Gish five times, noted Gish ignores evidence that is contrary to Gish's religious beliefs.[10] Moreover, Pigliucci criticized the organizations Gish runs, the personal attacks Gish makes, the pseudoscience Gish teaches, and even Gish's claim that Adam in Genesis 1 had a belly button.

[minx]

Nice work foraker

 

I'll present some arguments with out specifics like foraker just provided.

 

I challenge you to google Richard Trott.

 

Transitional forms? there are several transitional forms of dinosaurs in the fossil record. ceratopsian ---> triceratops

 

Australopithecus? Neanderthals?

[sexual_chocolate]

In 2004, Gish appeared on Penn and Teller's Showtime television show Bullshit! on the episode "Creationism." On the show Gish explained that "neither creation nor evolution are scientific theories. Evolution is no more scientific than creation." The scientific proof Gish offered for creationism was that the Grand Canyon was created in one day during the Biblical flood that involved Noah's Ark. As for Gish's claim that there are no fossils to demonstrate evolution, Dr Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education noted "part of the problem is Dr. Gish hasn't kept up with the scientific literature." The host, Penn Jillette, concluded that "Duane doesn't want to find anything that will shake up his world view" and "his God lives only in the margins of science and he wants to keep those margins wide."

[ClimbingPanther]

You'd better get started then. We're waiting. You are engaging in what is known as 'science by assertion', i.e. "I say it is so, therefore it must be". If you're going to buck the conventional wisdom, you're going to have to do better than that. Maybe just give us three or four fully substantiated counter examples for evolution. That shouldn't be beyond your abilities, correct. Or are the pre-Socratics beyond your abilities as well?

 

Why? you will not beleive it, may not even read it.

 

According to evolutionary theory, starting with the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and the simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases, the universe created itself. This is clearly a violation of natural law, namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to this law an isolated system can never increase in order and complexity, transforming itself to higher and higher levels of organization. An isolated system will inevitably, with time, run down, becoming more and more disorderly. There are no exceptions. Contrary to this natural law, evolutionists believe the universe is an isolated system which transformed itself from the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases into the incredibly complex universe we have today. This is a direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If natural laws are natural laws, the universe could not have created itself. The only alternative is that it is not an isolated system. There must be a Creator that is external to and independent of the natural universe who was responsible for its origin and who created the natural laws that govern its operation.

 

I can read this well enough to know you don't understand science very well.

The Second Law takes way too much abuse from creationists. Entropy is a thermodynamic property, not some visual property of neatness and complexity. If you don't know what that means and why it does not preclude evolution, don't worry about it, but don't use it improperly in an argument or you will not be taken seriously.

 

 

[foraker]

Ah, yes. Him....

Please point to Gish's articles in the standard peer-reviewed scientific literature (e.g. not his own books). Even controversial ideas get published there, though they do tend to at least follow what is considered scientific methodologies.

[sexual_chocolate]

"Gish has, for example, declared that the reptile-bird transition Archaeopteryx was not a transition because it had feathers and flew and was, therefore, a bird." Trott noted "to make the absurd assertion that Archaeopteryx did not show features of a reptile, Gish must conceal from his audience facts about Archaeopteryx such as that it possessed a pubic peduncle and a long bony tail. These are features found in reptiles that are never found in birds."

 

[foraker]

Nice work foraker

 

Not really. JayB would probably do a better job at it as he's far more articulate. He's probably smarter than me, too, by ignoring the whole thing.

[minx]

maybe, but i'm sucker for good chart and cited reference.

[underworld]

holy crap... gone for 2 hours and missed 4 pages of posts.

 

read most of it, but too far behind to contribute now.

 

 

good thread!

[Seahawks]

Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.

With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world's best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old

 

[sexual_chocolate]

Critics object to the often unstructured nature of the debates, what they call a "shotgun" approach to presenting many arguments, bouncing from one issue to another by continually throwing out new claims without bothering to answer previous objections, each of which would require considerable time and information to refute, a technique which has been referred to as the "Gish Gallop."

 

 

The "Gish Gallop"! Why I do believe I have encountered it here.