The Watchmaker - story

[bevin]

Quote:

Even the AiG people agree that the life on earth LOOKS old.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1866.asp

Ham writes:

Once I accept the plain words of Scripture in context, the fact of ordinary days, no death before sin, the Bible’s genealogies, etc., all make it clear that I cannot accept millions or billions of years of history. Therefore, I would conclude there must be something wrong with man’s ideas about the age of the universe.

In short, he is deliberately choosing to ignore the obvious interpretation

In places like

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

they agree on the basic data, but they don't agree on the interpretation

Quote:

The creationist looks at the same fossil record and sees evidence of a global flood.

If that is what they see, then they are simply ignoring 99% of the actual evidence and seeing just what they want to see

As I have frequently pointed out, every short-age creationist can see the White Cliffs of Dover, and not one can explain them

/Bevin

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

In short, he is deliberately choosing to ignore the obvious interpretation

Again, a lack of understanding of the creationist philosophy or world view. The creationist does not accept the naturalist assumptions upon which they interpret the evidence.

Both creationists and naturalists are guilty of circular reasoning.

This is also true in regard to the fossil record and the flood. Creationists are not ignoring 99% of the evidence at all. They are rejecting 99% of the naturalistic assumptions made in respect to the fossil record.

• Creationists reject that we have a C14:C12 starting point for carbon dating prior to the flood that would allow us to accurately date fossils which lived prior to the flood.
• Creationists reject that the sedimentary rock layers were formed gradually.
• Creationists reject that we know how much of a parent element and daughter element was in a given rock at its creation.
• Creationists reject that radioactive decay has always been at the same rate.
• Creationists reject the entire idea of uniformitarianism (as does the Bible) - which is the backbone of natural science.

It is no wonder the evidence says two different things to the two different groups.

It is not that the evidence speaks in favor of naturalism and creationists try to rationalize it and come up with wacky theories to do so. The evidence is neutral. It neither favors creationism or naturalism. Creationists do not ignore evidence anymore than naturalists do.

According to the Bible, the evidence "speaks" in favor of creation and naturalists are willingly ignorant. They choose not to see what nature reveals. Many creationists will zealously present that.

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:20-22)

I am not quite that zealous. I think many naturalists believe what they do because they have been taught to believe it is true and do not grasp or understand the creationist perspective. However going back a couple of centuries, the scientific community did decided to look for only natural explanations and not allow the supernatural to be considered. Romans 1:22 does speak well to that.

[Dr. Shane]

BTW: the panda's thumb can be explained by natural selection, which is not owned by naturalists. Edward Blyth, a creationist, actually wrote about natural selection before Charles Darwin. The two were contemporaries. Darwin admired Blyth's views on natural selection but disagreed with his creationist beliefs.

[bevin]

Quote:

Creationists reject that we have a C14:C12 starting point for carbon dating prior to the flood that would allow us to accurately date fossils which lived prior to the flood.

Unfortunately for Creationists, the C14 dating is only one of several methods of dating an archaelogical site. Dating methods include

(a) C14 dating

( Thermoluminescence

© Glass (Obsidian) Hydration

(d) Tree rings

(e) Ice cores

(f) Deposit depth

(g) Astronomical events

(h) Historical records

4,000 years ago simply is not that long ago, and lots of these methods reach far earlier than that - and they agree with each other!

Quote:

Creationists reject that the sedimentary rock layers were formed gradually.

So do evolutionists. The layers are a combination of steady and rapid deposition and erosion. Unfortunately there are sometimes ways telling which it was, and the shear volume of material in the White Cliffs of Dover show that it can not have been laid down in just a few weeks.

Quote:

Creationists reject that we know how much of a parent element and daughter element was in a given rock at its creation.

This is the "God created the world looking old" argument. It leads directly to the "why did God make it look like life has evolved?" question.

Quote:

Creationists reject that radioactive decay has always been at the same rate.

The rate is NOT an arbitrary number that you can just fiddle with to change the age of the rocks - it affects how hot the Sun is, how hot the Earth is, how much background radiation there is, mutation rates, and possibly chemical reaction rates...

Quote:

Creationists reject the entire idea of uniformitarianism (as does the Bible) - which is the backbone of natural science.

the panda's thumb can be explained by natural selection, which is not owned by naturalists.

Only by claiming rates of beneficial mutation creation and selection far HIGHER than the evolutionists measure.

/Bevin

[bevin]

Note the following from the Wikipedia

Quote:

Note, however, that many "catastrophic" events are perfectly compatible with uniformitarianism. For example, Charles Lyell thought that ordinary geological processes would cause Niagara Falls to move upstream to Lake Erie within 10000 years, leading to catastrophic flooding of a large part of North America.

Uniformitarianism is a generalisation of the principle of actualism, which states that present day-processes (astronomical, geological, paleontological,...) can be used to interpret past patterns. The principle of actualism is the cornerstone of paleoecology.

[Dr. Shane]

All of the dating methods used by naturalists are based on assumptions about past conditions that they are unable to prove. I used the C14 dating as an example because it is so easy to illustrate. Some call this pseudo-science, others call it historical science because it does not involve observable processes that can be repeated like operational science, which deals with the present, does. I could go right down the list and discuss the assumptions involved with each dating method and the differences in philosophy between naturalists and creationists but I don't have the time of patience to bother with it - at least not now. It isn't top secret information. Anyone that subscribes to creationist journals, including Adventist ones, probably already knows what I am referring to.

Few creationists consider the idea of God creating rocks with both parent and daughter elements in them as making the Earth look old. It is not God's fault that naturalists one day would come up with the idea that they could date His creation by the quantities of parent and daughter elements in rocks. God didn't come up with the dating methods - imperfect man did. So when imperfect man's methods of dating produce errornous results, man cannot blame God for somehow fooling him by making things look old. Now if God would have told us how to date rocks, we follow His instructions and still get errornous results, then yes, we could blame God. But that is not the case.

Quote:

the rate is NOT an arbitrary number that you can just fiddle with...

Creationists are not stupid. They have PhDs too. They understand the issues involved. They simply do not accept the naturalist assumptions. Which is actually healthy for academics. More schools should be teaching philosophy of religion and science so that students are taught HOW to think and not WHAT to think.

Now it is true that naturalists believe that we need millions of years for evolution and the creationist believes we only need thousands. Again, they are operating off from different assumptions. The creationist, for example, believe that all the different types of dogs we see today all had a common ancestor - two of which went onto the ark. The descendants of those dogs had multiple mutations which produced the vast variety we see today.

So what assumptions are different? The creationist believes that all the genetic information for all these different breads of dogs was already in the common ancestors' genes. It was only a matter of the decedents' mutations to occur to enable it to adapt to a given environment. If the genetic information was already there, it doesn't take millions of years.

The naturalist believes that mutations have happened that actually added genetic information. It may take millions of years or perhaps be completely impossible for a panda to develop a thumb if it doesn't already have the genetic information in its DNA. However it wouldn't take that long for the panda to develop a thumb and his distant cousin a different feature if that information had been in their common ancestor's DNA.

Different assumptions, different conclusions, different philosophies.

[Bravus]

I actually agree with Shane on this point. The point that one of the philosophies better meets Occam's Razor than the other is probably where bevin's perspective diverges.

[Amelia]

William of Ockham

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

[LifeHiscost]

(a) The organisms APPEAR to have evolved

( The rocks APPEAR to have had life in them for millions of years

© The evidences of human habitation APPEAR to show it >20,000 years

Why, given a literal understanding of Genesis, do humans APPEAR to have been around for >20,000 years.

Why, for those people that believed whales and elephants did not die before the Fall, does it APPEAR that whales and elephants have been dying for millions of years?

/Bevin

And the earth appeared flat until more information was discovered. If the Word of God had been believed from the beginning, the lack of evidence wouldn't have reached the point where wrong appeared to be right.

"It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" Isaiah 40:22 KJV

"Your kindness to the wicked does not make them do good. Although others do right, the wicked keep doing wrong and take no notice of the Lord’s majesty." Isaiah 26:10

NLT

Regards!!

[LifeHiscost]

And the Person Who has been there the longest and witnessed the most ought to be believed.

"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them." Deut 33:27 KJV

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.... And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament.... And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. " Gen 1:1,5,7,8

ASV etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

Regards!!

[LifeHiscost]

Some of you have probably already seen this...I thought it worth mulling over...

I coudn't pursue the link this evening because of the ISP I'm using, but having seen it a couple of days ago I'm satisfied the person who created it was trying to praise God for Who He is. It appears some others have totally missed the point and choose to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

TRUTH is and all the explanations for or against won't change the reality. Hope you keep Him in your eyesight, Pam, and don't allow the human propensity to make what is simple, difficult to see, become a problem for seeing the TRUTH.

"Jesus said to him, "I am the....truth,...no one comes to the Father but through Me." John 14:4 NASB

"He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day." John 12:48 NKJV

Blessings!!

[bevin]

Quote:

All of the dating methods used by naturalists are based on assumptions about past conditions that they are unable to prove.

Agreed. But that is not the important issue.

The important issue is that widely different methods that depend of very independent assumptions agree with each other.

C14, thermoluminesence, ice cores, tree rings, and astronomy ALL provide ways of dating back around 10,000 years. Why did God make a world where these dates clearly contradict a literal reading of the Bible?

Radiological, continental drift, genetic drift (fossils) and meteor impacts ALL provide ways of dating back millions of years and show a world with large animals in it way back then. Why did God make a world where these dates clearly contradict a literal reading of the Bible?

Short-Age Creationists require God to have created a huge deception.

/Bevin

[Gerr]

Thanks! That was terrific!

I was watching the news yesterday, it a segment of it was on the anniversary of the American landing on the moon. One of those astronauts who saw the immensity and complexity of the universe from the moon that came to the conclusion that there must be a Designer somewhere.

Common sense tells me, no way that what I see came to be by themselves out of nothing.

Gerry

[bevin]

Common sense tells us lots of things that aren't true

It has taken science hundreds of years to correct lots of common sense "facts"

/Bevin

[John317]

Common sense tells us lots of things that aren't true

It has taken science hundreds of years to correct lots of common sense "facts"

/Bevin

Don't you believe in a "Designer" of the universe, Bevin?

Or do you believe that the Big Bang arose out of nothing and resulted in everything we know today due to mere chance? How do you account for it?

How much faith do we have in the Bible? Do we dismiss it whenever our human knowledge tells us it is mistaken? How many have done that in the past and been wrong? And didn't sin enter human experience in the beginning due to people deciding to rely on human judgment rather than on God's Word?

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

The important issue is that widely different methods that depend of very independent assumptions agree with each other.

This is not entirely correct. In many cases one dating method will date a given object differently than another dating method will.

The natural science era has done a lot of good by moving societies away from religious superstitions. As I have said before, dissenting ideas are not a bad thing. The truth need not fear investigation. It is when we try to limit people's access to dissenting ideas that we are trying to control their thinking. That is why creation and intelligent design ought to be taught in government schools in a philosophy curriculum.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

The point that one of the philosophies better meets Occam's Razor than the other is probably where bevin's perspective diverges.

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

I understand how and why naturalists arrive at their conclusions. I also have a lot of respect for many of these men and women of science. However for us that believe in the Supernatural, do we expect that God would have done everything He has done in the simplest way for us to understand?.

Let us consider for the moment the phenomenon of universal flood stories. Throughout the world, in various cultures and religions we find stories of a universal flood or a universal destruction of the earth with only a handful of people and animals surviving. Using Occam's Razor, wouldn't the simplest explanation be that there actually was a universal flood and the story was handed down throughout all these cultures and religions?

[phkrause]

I was also thinking about that. Wasn't Nan's Husband, Sammy I believe is his name, mentioning about his home country of china that they had a Flood story. And I have also heard that almost every culture has there own Flood story that has been repeated down through the ages. I find that very interesting to say the least.

pkrause

[Bravus]

I guess possibly an even simpler explanation is that every country has had at least one big flood in its history.

[phkrause]

It seems to me that most of these are about the same time period, wouldn't you say?

pkrause

[Gerr]

Common sense tells us lots of things that aren't true

It has taken science hundreds of years to correct lots of common sense "facts"

/Bevin

Science is about oservation, experimentation, and reproducibility or verification of one's observations. When it comes to origins, Bevin, science is no less dependent on faith & assumptions than the creationist.

An automobile, a dictionary, a watch, none of them can come into existence without someone making it, yet you want me to believe that something far more complex such as a living cell can come into existence by itself?

Gerry

[Dr. Shane]

I would think that every country - or geographical area - having a local flood and those local flood stories all getting distorted into a universal flood and destruction story is more complexed, not less complexed. I mean, what are the chances so many local flood stories be handed down generations and all get distorted?

The simpler explanation, in my mind, is that there was actually a universal flood and the story has been handed down through various cultures and religions.

[Dr. Shane]

The flood is only one example. There are several examples where naturalist explanations are the simplest. There are several others where supernatural explanations are simpler. Both sides come up with some complex explanations for some things that would be otherwise hard to explain.

[bevin]

Re; Flood stories

Don't forget the story, in the Gilgamesh form, is present in Babylon.

Don't forget people, and religions, and stories, migrate.

Don't forget many cultures have no written hisotyr, and can't tell you how far back a story existed in that culture

/Bevin

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

Don't forget people, and religions, and stories, migrate.

That is what happened after the Tower of Babel.