Creationism vs. Evolution

[The Bard]

I'm sorry, can carbondating only accurately measure 60,000 years??

Well that'd explain how we discovered how ever many billion years old the universe is no?

 

Unless I'm much mistaken, I don't think you can actually carbon date the universe

[Supergrunch]

Furthermore, I get flack for even being an athiest because of the radicals out there - Dawkins, and the people that follow him like he's Jesus. Overall I've found the majority of other athiests put a bad name on me while the religious peoples (some are understanding and respectful) accuse me of being a moralless sinner even though I represent what their religion was meant to stand for better than they.

Although he's a good biologist, Dawkins fails to understand the point of religion. It's unfortunate, because many atheists do.

[The Bard]

My Biology teacher knows Richard Dawkins, he says that even though he's a good speaker, he's the worlds biggest prick

[Stocka]

My Biology teacher knows Richard Dawkins, he says that even though he's a good speaker, he's the worlds biggest prick

I can imagine. I remember a video I watched in a Philosophy lesson of him arguing with some Christian guy, he is incredibly narrow minded.

[MoogleViper]

Well I got bored of reading through your ignorance (not all of you before the 5 year old in you starts shouting "IT WASN'T ME" AT ME) halfway through the fourth page. I'm not going to say anything about evolution or creation, but I will say why debates between science and religion doesn't work. A lot of scientists take what they find as fact (or some parts fact) and are unwilling to listen to anything that goes against what they have found and don't listen to anyone who doesn't have Dr. in front of their name. Similarly religion will happily tell you that you're wrong they're right but when you chalenge what they say they'll just say something along the lines of, "It's what I believe. You should accept other peoples beliefs." They fail to see the hypocrisy. Granted they are protected by cloaks of "God doesn't give you all of the facts you have to have faith, he's testing you" etc.

 

Granted I don't nobody on here has been quite that extreme but a lot of you have shown ignorance.

[The fish]

All this is proof of evolution. The theory of evolution is just a theory, but that only describes a model of why and how it occurs. The concept of evolution is proven by all the things you find in that link. Just as you believe the billion years old Earth, it's not a theory but a fact.

 

Creationists often say 'evolution just a theory'. It's not. Maybe Darwin was wrong, but that doesn't mean evolution is fake.

 

Sorry to be picky, and turn on my allies, but it is a theory. All science is theoretical. However, the reason people accept a lot of science is that there is not evidence against it, and there is tons of evidence supporting it.

 

I can imagine. I remember a video I watched in a Philosophy lesson of him arguing with some Christian guy, he is incredibly narrow minded.

 

At least he's not closed minded. He has said time and again that if there is solid evidence that evolution is incorrect, then he will throw the theory out the window, and the same applies for all scientific theory and for the existence of a God.

[Flaight]

I think the biggest problem with Creationism is that it collapses when you stop believing in God. Belief in god is a blind faith, so Creationism is built on a blind faith.

 

On the other hand Evolutionism doesn't ask you to believe in it first. I'm not saying Creationism is necessarily wrong because of this, but it does mean Creationism is built on a much more shaky ground than Evolutionism.

[BlueStar]

Sorry to be picky, and turn on my allies, but it is a theory. All science is theoretical. However, the reason people accept a lot of science is that there is not evidence against it, and there is tons of evidence supporting it.

 

I don't mean to sneer at other people's beliefs but I staggers me when people refuse to accept the evidence of evolution because of things like inevitable gaps in the fossil record but have no problem accepting that entire world flooded when there isn't even enough water in the world to do that (and if there was, where did it go?) and that someone made a magical tardis boat capable of holding two of every animal in the world (so their children could have yummy animal incest sex to repopulate the planet) and feed them without them eating each other, one of the pair dying through disease etc etc. Worst thing is, posing these questions makes me feel like I'm being a **** when in all reality it shouldn't - scientific theories have to hold up to constant logical questions and reasoning, why shouldn't bible stories? Of course they don't have to because the get out clause is "Well God magicked the water and then he magicked it away again." Of course if he can do that it would have been nice of him to magick the tsunami away, but he seems to have been a bit of a deadbeat dad recently. Or maybe all the miracles that seemed to happen at a rate of about 5 a day in biblical times wore him out and he's having a holiday.

[DCK]

Sorry to be picky, and turn on my allies, but it is a theory. All science is theoretical. However, the reason people accept a lot of science is that there is not evidence against it, and there is tons of evidence supporting it.

There's theories and theories. One usage of the word theory, the one by science, is a description of a certain phenomenon. The creationists often like the use 'theory' as something based on mere thinking, a matter of opinion, whereas the two meanings are completely different. The theory of gravity is also 'just a theory' as creationists like to say, but that doesn't make it a matter of religion whether you fall back to the Earth.

 

Now suppose you call the theory of evolution the sheer claim that life changes shape continously, you can prove the truth of that theory by checking all the evidence. Likewise you can claim a theory of gravity that says that things fall to the Earth, and check that by dropping something. The theory applies, and even though you can't tell if the gravity is caused by attraction of masses, curvature of space-time or Higgs bosons, you have proven gravity. Likewise, although you can't say what caused evolution, the evidence proves that it has occurred. It could have been caused by natural selection or because of God's hand, but it has happened.

 

By treating the Bible's story as a theory as well, you can disprove it. The Bible claims all life has been created at once. That would mean that extinct animals would have lived alongside existing animals. From that follows that you should be able to find bunny fossils alongside Velociraptors, an obvious predator for it. Those fossils however, are found in entirely different sediments, or time periods. In fact, bunny fossils don't exist for some reason (perhaps they haven't been around long enough to make fossils?).

 

Why do kangaroos live only in Australia? They could have thrived well in the Americas, but they are not there for some reason... Noah's Ark planted them all on some mountain in the Middle East, yet there are no kangaroos there. They seem to have swam all the way to Australia, while a kangaroo doesn't have the swimming skills at all to cross the ocean gap to Australia.

 

Both phenomena are inconsistent with the Bible's theory. Life would look very differently indeed if creationism was real.

[Supergrunch]

Likewise you can claim a theory of gravity that says that things fall to the Earth, and check that by dropping something.

Try dropping a helium balloon or a bird... theory not proven. You have to go more in depth than that.

[BlueStar]

Say this is what we know about this shape:

Now, we haven't got a complete picture but we can theorise that it's most likely a triangle. Of course we don't KNOW that, but that's what the evidence suggests. It could look like this:

But from looking at the things we DO know, that's pretty unlikely.

 

Now squarists, who have been told the shape is a square from day one could point at the people actually trying to find out what the shape is rather than just accepting that it's a square and say they don't know anything. There's massive gaps! There's TEN gaps and one of them is huge! It's junk science, it's definitely a square, praise the Equilateral Quadrilateral Parallelogram!

 

Now say we find out another piece of evidence and now our model looks like this. More evidence it's a triangle, right?

 

 

Not so, say the squarists. Now there's ELEVEN GAPS! This 'theory' is even more flawed than it was before!

 

See you don't have to prove it's a square. You just have to prove no-one KNOWS it's a triangle.

[DCK]

Try dropping a helium balloon or a bird... theory not proven. You have to go more in depth than that.

I was trying to make a point. Of course, it's not that simple, but you know what I mean right?

 

Also, nice post BlueStar.

[BlueStar]

Some good reading about young earth theory and its recent resurgence (Christians seemed to give up on it decades ago but now they're getting all fundamentalist about it again.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

 

I don't really like having debates like this, firstly because it gives the impression there is some kind of controversy in scientific circles over if evolution happened and scientists are arguing over it - they aren't - and also because it takes a rather nasty swing towards Science vs Religion, which I don't think evolution is a case of at all. Many leading religious types say that there is no conflict between evolution and God at all. I wish more people would take that view and just say "Fair cop, evolution is probably the method we ended up here but that's not the important part of the scripture, it's that we came from God originally" or whatever.

[Supergrunch]

I was trying to make a point. Of course, it's not that simple, but you know what I mean right?

 

Also, nice post BlueStar.

Yes, I know what you mean, but I don't allow woolly science. :wink:

 

Like intelligent design...

[The fish]

*Lengthy but very clever analogy.*

 

Nice post. Very clear and explains why we think what we do about evolution.

[weeyellowbloke]

Ok, I've woken up in an arguementative mood, so I'm just going to try to present a few things.

 

Firstly, the Earth is not a few thousand years old. Why? Well lets see, firstly radiometric dating. Using the halflife of radioactive isotopes in igneous rock formations and measuring the difference between parent and daughter isotopes and provide a fairly accurate dating of the source rock. Although Carbon 14 isotopes are used like this, they only have a halflife of ~6000 years. This is only of any real use in archeology, luckily though we have other isotopes such as Uranium 238 with a halflife of 4.46 billion years, Uranium 235 with 700 million and Potassium 40 with 1.25 billion years. What is more, you take these isotopes and compare them within rocks and you get a pretty damn good correlation in date give or take a few of million years, which frankly is pretty accurate given a scale of hundreds of millions of years.

 

Then you have ice cores from Greenland, Antartica, and mountainous ice in the Andes. By measuring current accumulation rates and working backwards it is possible to date these ice cores back around 100 thousand years. What is more by measuring oxygen levels, dust content and sodium content it is possible to chart climate changes over this period of time, and these geographically wide ranging ice core all correlate together almost exactly. Although this is only a hundred thousand years data, it still blows the whole 6000 year old Earth theory out the water.

 

Next, plate tectonic activity. Paleomagnetism within igneous rocks in Britain show that it once lay at a low latitude close to the equator about 390 million years ago. Now if the Earth was a few thousand years old then how did Britain reach its current position in that amount of time when it is measured to be currently moving at a rate of a few centimetres a year (as measured by GPS). Same goes for any other continent.

 

If all the prehistoric life on Earth was wiped out in a great flood and all the sediment layers seen in the geologic record were deposited at the same time by this same flood, then why are there different rock layers? Surely purely marine anoxic conditions would be created by such an event, meaning the stratigraphy would be made up of one massive layer of black shale with a whole heap of mixed up fossils. Instead we see hundreds of individual shale beds divided by many other rock types including sandstones, conglomerates and igneous layers. Might I add some of these layers such as red sandstone contain mineral cement such as Hematite who's oxidised chemistry indicates a land environment and not marine. Not to mention sandstone cross bedding resulting from ancient sand dunes and metamorphic rock formed under high pressure and temperature by ancient mountain chains. Oh, and fossil zoning, why is it trilobites and graptolites are found lower stratigraphically while fish and dinosaurs are found higher up? Why are graptolites nicely divided by morphology between beds? Could it be that they didn't exist at the same time.

 

Next, the fact that apparently there is no links in the fossil record between different creatures. Well lets see..... Archaeopteryx, there's one linking lizards (dinosaurs) with birds, Ambulocetus also known as the walking whale, there's two, then you have the extensive fossil evolution of Nautiloids to Ammonoids to Belemnoids though to squid and other modern Cephalopods. Then you have evolutionary left overs in modern species. Seals and whales are sometimes found with pelvic bone structures despite not having legs, humans have the coccyx, an evolutionary left over of a tail structure (although it still serves a purpose), the appendix which serves no real purpose but is thought to be a vestigial organ from ape ancestors when we had a more herbivore diet, hell even hair on our legs is an evolutionary left over. Finally, want an example of a modern day transitional creature in evolution. The penguin. Yep it's a bird, but an aquatic bird who wings are gradually evolving to flippers and feathers becoming much finer and insulating.

 

Well there you go, a bit of evidence to back up evolution and generally dispute the bibles creation story. I could come with a whole heap more if anyone wants. So here pretty much lies my reason for thinking the Earth is billions of years old and evolution exists. If creationists ever come up with any quantative data or observations to back up their theories then I'll be happy to rethink their views, but for the time being it seems to me they take evidence which fits their opinions and conveniantly either ignore everything else or claim it's inaccurate.

[The fish]

*Insert lengthy post here*

 

I believe that the creationists just got owned.

[Supergrunch]

Firstly, the Earth is not a few thousand years old. Why? Well lets see, firstly radiometric dating. Using the halflife of radioactive isotopes in igneous rock formations and measuring the difference between parent and daughter isotopes and provide a fairly accurate dating of the source rock. Although Carbon 14 isotopes are used like this, they only have a halflife of ~6000 years. This is only of any real use in archeology, luckily though we have other isotopes such as Uranium 238 with a halflife of 4.46 billion years, Uranium 235 with 700 million and Potassium 40 with 1.25 billion years. What is more, you take these isotopes and compare them within rocks and you get a pretty damn good correlation in date give or take a few of million years, which frankly is pretty accurate given a scale of hundreds of millions of years.

Which is why I posted the wikipedia link to radiometric dating earlier.

 

The only problem with a post like yours is that the creationists won't bother to read it and will just deny it all, even though it's all correct.

[DCK]

Like BlueStar said, we shouldn't be having to explain all this...

[weeyellowbloke]

Meh, I just was feeling argumentative and a bit smug this morning for some reason. Plus writing all that out was good revision for my earth history and environmental palaeobiology modules, the exams aren't for another couple of months though so I'll have probably forgotten it all again by then.

[The fish]

The only problem with a post like yours is that the creationists won't bother to read it and will just deny it all, even though it's all correct.

 

Which is why a lot of religious people piss me off. My friends who are religious (most of them due to my school) have learned that its for the best if we don't ever discuss religion as it will normal end up with people from different denominations shouting at each other, or them saying "why are you saying the same arguments over and over again" to me, as they haven't understood my point so I have to put it to them again in a different way.

 

Meh, I just was feeling argumentative and a bit smug this morning for some reason. Plus writing all that out was good revision for my earth history and environmental palaeobiology modules, the exams aren't for another couple of months though so I'll have probably forgotten it all again by then.

 

Well it's nice to know we have are uses.:awesome:

[DCK]

Meh, I just was feeling argumentative and a bit smug this morning for some reason. Plus writing all that out was good revision for my earth history and environmental palaeobiology modules, the exams aren't for another couple of months though so I'll have probably forgotten it all again by then.

Your post was great though. It's just that it doesn't matter because it's not going to reach anybody. It's just that creationists are almost by definition not the most sensible people (although some people here are well discussible, props to Jonwah) and have an ignorance to real world proof.

[Supergrunch]

I know, it was a good post, and I read it all the way through, but I was just pointing out that most of the creationists wouldn't.

[BlueStar]

People who deny evolution aren't even worshiping the Christian God in my opinion. They're worshiping the God Of The Gaps, the God who caused thunder when people didn't understand thunder, the God who was the sun before people understood what the sun was.

[DCK]

People who deny evolution aren't even worshiping the Christian God in my opinion. They're worshiping the God Of The Gaps, the God who caused thunder when people didn't understand thunder, the God who was the sun before people understood what the sun was.

I don't agree with that. The God Of The Gaps is there because something is inexplicable for people. Creationists refuse to follow an explanation because their god is there. In the first GoG is a consequence, in the latter GoG is the cause.

 

Inexplicability -> God explanation

God explanation -> Ignorance of real world

 

Both of these things are basically what stopped any form of human knowledge progress during the Middle Ages.