Creationists

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The discoveries of science have disproved many scientific consensuses. By your logic we ought to the present ones as well; unless you intend to engage in some special pleading?



I have read 'The Grand Design', have you? Having read his claims on the matter, I find them unconvincing. All it proves is the statement often quoted by Einstein that scientists make poor philosophers.



A good deal of claims made by ID are falsifiable and testable... most of the claims have been tested and falsified... some of it is science... just bad science.

I've never really understood why the exact timeframe for creation really matters. Surely the point the Christian creationists should focus on is not how many days it took, or whether it was 3 billion years divided into 6 equal parts, but on their belief that God did it.

ID is creationism in disguise which I consider less honest than creationism. Effectively your statement reads: "YEC is rubbish [yay] so are people who accept the science of evolution over unsubstantiated magical explanations. Therefore ID isn't anti-science. Also Evolution is a view with no real bearing on biology."

That's either a dishonest or ignorant statement.

@91 before you go bashing Steven Hawking because you find him "unconvincing" you should really state why you object to his claims otherwise you come across as a pompous ass. I'm guessing you are a philosophy major, not a scientist of mathematician.

You are right I was a philosophy major. However, I prefer to reserve my complaints on the matter of Hawking's claims for the time being... I was not the one who made an appeal to authority. The burden of proof rests on the person who made the appeal.

what puts the fire into the equation? What makes these equations that we understand the world with correspond with something in reality? They could just be equations on a notebook... why do these equations construct a law-abiding universe and not some fictitious made-up one with properties that haven't been imagined yet... Why is there any universe at all for physics to describe?

perhaps... but that has not been my experience. I'll look into it further, do you have any material I can read up on? My only experience has been with real-life creationists who I've met in the NW and in California, and they aren't anti-science as people on here describe them. Could you also provide a list of the variations on ID?

exactly.

the text doesn't support 7 days in the normal sense. A day is determined by the sun and the earth's rotation, but we had days before the sun, so these aren't normal days that are being described here. I can give further proof from within the text that discount this notion that the earth was created in 7 "normal" days after work tomorrow.

The purpose of the first few chapters of Genesis is to discount polytheism and teach you the nature of God, not explain science.

Well, no, I wasn't making an argument from authority, however if I had to bet who understood the science better I would bet on Steven Hawking, not you. So if you are going to dismiss Steven Hawking it would be courteous to explain why rather than just state that you are not convinced - that just comes across as smug. If you really do have a good argument against say, M-theory, then by all means publish in Nature or Science but I sincerely doubt your objections are based on well, anything. I mean there are plenty of things I don't understand in science like advanced atmospheric chemistry, however I am not about to dismiss the decades of research of by people who do understand it and claim that because I don't get all of the equations I am not convinced that climate change is strongly supported by science.

You also made a claim the because some of the ID movement's claims were falsifiable it made it bad science, not pseudo science. I have a problem with this - you can't really delineate pseudo-science from real science on that criterion alone, after all horoscopes, homeopathy, and tarot cards all make falsifiable claims that are consistently shot down, but that doesn't make them science.



@ market and church..


Rapid oxidization producing enough heat to catalyze more oxidization?.



Because humans made "these equations" to correspond with reality. It doesn't matter where it is written - two apples plus two apples still equal four apples.



The universe isn't constructed from equations, equations are constructed to describe the universe.



Rhetorical questions like this are pointless - the universe doesn't have to exist for a reason and probably doesn't (by probably I mean a probability of functionally 0).

I've answered your questions, now answer mine. Where's your evidence supporting creationism/ID? also, Can you give me your understanding of what a hypothesis is and what a theory is.

and that's why it speaks a lot about elohim (plural)?

..Or why it tries so desperately to describe the structure of the (flat) earth? Gah. I'll never get why they think that a supreme intelligence would be such a terrible communicator relying on secret messages in garbled, self contradicting texts. Mind you, arguing with an apologist is futile because every time you push them into a corner everything becomes allegorical.

"Why does your holy book say this stupid s#it?"

"um..ah.."

"Or this, what kind of idiot would write that?"

"well.... um..."

"And this!? don't get me started on this"

"Ah..Oh Yea.. It's allegorical and only smart people can understand what it really means. If you knew that you would totally agree with me."

No, DentArthurDent was.



Not smug, defensive maybe. If someone like Dent wishes to make an argument that the universe does not require a creator to exist; I would like to hear it. Any argument I make would simply distract from my desire to hear this case actually supported.



Since you are asking. A good starting point of criticism of Hawking and Mlodinow would actually be in their use of M-Theory. M-Theory posits 10^500 possible worlds that are compatible with our universe's laws. They use this to generate their world ensemble, however, they are possible worlds; leaping to the conclusion that they are actual worlds is not a testable claim. Rather, the claim is a blatant piece of meta-physics.



In my view pseudoscience is science that contains unprovable claims or something that does not present itself for open evaluation and refutation. 'Some' and I emphasize 'some' of the claims of ID are open for precise evaluation and refutation. In fact, as far as I am aware just about all of the specific claims made by ID have been refuted and often in peer-reviewed print. Concepts such as irreducible complexity are not scientific; claims that certain precise things are irreducibly complex are. The former cannot be tested and refuted; the later can and as far as I am aware, has been. If you think an empirical, testable and precise claim is not science (bad or otherwise) then I think you may have a methodological prejudice.



The view that the use of the word Elohim in Genesis is intended to be a reference to earlier polytheism; is bunk. I wish elohim was plural; because it would be indicative of triune thought in the first book. The use of the word elohim is used not necessarily to indicate plurality but to emphasize the importance of the noun (think of it as a royal 'we'). You need to study your Hebrew.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05393a.htm

Let's play nice, boys and girls.

At risk of being rebuked for doing an anecdote, and called bizarre:

This is a topic very near me. The initial break with my paleontologist brother came when I asked him - as one scientist and brother to another brother and scientist - whether a Creation Scientist I had heard of was correctly representing current evolutionary theory, since circumstances have put me out of touch with my other and preferred authority on evolutionary theory.

He totally refused to answer. Got livid [scared Herself, he takes after Grandpappy and can be fearsome.

May I point out as a polite person with some experience: The Strident Creationists are really a minority and would pretty much get covered up by the encroaching jungle IF the Strident Atheists would stop engaging them.

There are theists and atheists, scientist and non galore who are perfectly aware, not to go into excess detail, that there is no conflict between the work and findings of the scientist and the postulared existence of one or more creative dive entity.

The rabble rousers who like my brother march around with signs and chants, "Storm the Bastille! They are out to DESTROY science." - totally ignoring and dissing the many scientists who are of various kinds theists - simply encourage the rabble rousers like Pastor Johnny who march around with signs and chants, "To the barricades! They are out to DESTROY the faith."

The more they are engaged, the louder both will shout, the more insane ideas both will et worked up about.

And the myriads who are neither serious scientists nor theologically inclined theists will not, because of all the shouting, be able to hear: Science has NOTHING to fear from God; God has NOTHING to fear from science.

Rabble rousing parAnoia is not the work of God or Science, it is purely satanic.

If you are not totally self absorbed you might look at the news occasionally to discover how Texas and a few other states are inhibiting the teaching of evolution and elevating the total nonsense of Creationism to the level of science equal to that of evolution and thereby doing serious damage to the education of young people seeking to make sense of the world and qualify for higher education. It is not an issue to be off-handedly dismissed.

Seriously man, you've got to learn how to pay attention to the world around you.

My elephant is not your elephant. I am no more blind than you. Do you honestly think the average guy in the pew or the carrel would get worked up if the media / politic axis did not amplify the nutters? I have talked to them, heard them. Including the ones who listen to Oprah and Pastor Johnny.

Very little of this stuff is any big deal till it gets turned into an instrument of Pawa.

Genesis 1:26,27 – Who Is God speaking to?

God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. — World English Bible