Modern creationism makes no sense

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No worries. Been there. It does get time-consuming, though. Ya know, it's kinda like "rules of engagement" in Vietnam. A decisive victory may be "possible," but it is not won without difficulty if one chooses to stand on principle.

Think of it another way: Ever notice that congressional Democrats almost NEVER get brought up on ethics charges? There's a good reason for that. To accuse someone of an ethics violation is to hold them to a moral standard. No standard = no wrongdoing. We may not feel that "fairness" is warranted, but we ought to no less require it.

You appear to be using "ad hoc" as if it meant "irrelevant". The definition I know is this:

Does that help in understanding why ad hoc hypotheses are so egregious?


No. I told you that this idea, as you describe it, is so silly that you'll have a hard time finding anyone who believes in it. Please do tell me how you get from there to thinking I believe it. I really want to know.

You also misinterpreted AG's answer to a related question from you. Your paraphrasing didn't make his answer more precise and less wishy-washy, it radically changed the meaning.


It is. I told you before that I accept, for example, the existence of irrational numbers. I have never observed an irrational number, nor do I expect to. I offered to explain what the difference is between my position and the position you attacked, and why it matters. You weren't interested. Therefore the error is not surprising.


That looks like you got it. I don't observe gravity. I find a regularity in my observations, and infer the existence of something I call gravity. If I believed only what I observe, I would have to deny the existence of gravity. And of irrational numbers.

Now please tell me why you thought I believed something that absurd?

Yes, I did misinterpret AG's answer, but it wasn't deliberate. I was just trying to make sure I understood something. AG DID provide the information I was looking for, so any mistake in my thinking on that is rectified.

My apologies for ascribing something to you in error. So what DO you think? You said that you "infer the existence" from regularity in your observations. With gravity, even though we can't "see" it, we do have the evidence from its effects on objects. Ergo, according to AG, greenblue, and Binary, we may believe that there is such a force as gravity, even if we are unclear as to EXACTLY what it is. It's like arguing that the sun does not exist. I can point to evidence that "proves" the sun exists just by stepping out on a clear day. As to what the sun IS, exactly, is a whole other issue. We agree that there IS such a thing as the sun. For you, is evidence required for belief? Or, more to the point, should something be ignored if there is no evidence for it? Or, perhaps, do you think that what these three have plainly said is absurd?

The "evidence" depends on how you look at things. I respect evolutionists for their beliefs but you gotta admit that a belief in God or a Creator is not far-fetched. You see, the two belief systems is based on two different things. Evolution is about the survival of favourable traits while Creationism is about the traits (which are supposed to be well-suited for the environment) designed by God. Uh...what evidence do you have against a Christian God?

Actually, I don't. There is too much that is problematic in my mind for any being that we would call "God".


Well, the problem is that many traits that survive aren't really "good" in any meaningful sense, but rather some seem rather horrifying, a fact pointed out by Darwin himself. So, it is difficult to see a teleology, but very easy to see that an ateleological process could have causes such nonsense.


1) Imperfect design.
2) Evil.

The Christian God is perfect and morally perfect, so imperfect creations, and evil both tend to suggest that such a being does not exist. Some would even argue that they outright PROVE that such a being doesn't exist.

Can you clarify what you mean by "horrifying"?


Everything was perfect in the Garden of Eden and the first two humans did not sin yet back then.

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice." -Charles Darwin

As it stands, there are a large body of creatures that survive by parasitic methods, there are a large body of creatures that kill in relatively ruthless manners such as lions killing the cubs of previous mates, there are even weird things such as cannibalism among chimps. As such, I don't think an attribution of this world to God makes sense.


And every organic structure was designed perfectly but this was somehow dramatically altered when two people ate an apple? Somehow, this just seems absurd and nonsensical. For one, I don't see much in Genesis saying that the animals also changed, only something in Isaiah saying that lions would (somehow) eat grass, which is kind of silly given that lions are by nature carnivores.

Even further, I don't find the whole "Garden of Eden" story that meaningful. The fact that some guy who I never met and that I am somehow "supposedly" descended from ate a fruit neither entails nor requires that I suffer, or that some thing called "Original Sin" exists in the first place to be passed down. It seems even less relevant given that God is supposed to be omniscient, and omnipotent, and thus would almost certainly have been able to create a world in which the Fall would never happen. It seems entirely irrelevant given that no historical evidence of any form really suggests a Garden of Eden kind of situation in the first place anyway.

I mean, the Garden of Eden only explains evil in the same way that a "Death Fairy" explains why people stop functioning when their head gets removed from their body.

Btw, this is interesting on the issue of the theory/fact issue of evolution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_ ... literature

Some biologists would go so far as to dispense with the title of "theory" for evolution. This makes sense to me given the conventional usage of words.

This unending discussion of deflating creationism is like someone playing ping-pong with a wall in the expectation the wall will finally admit defeat and stop returning the ball. The total mindlessness of creationism is so obvious that anyone claiming it immediately declare him/herself mentally deficient.

I tend to agree, but I'm not sure which side you think is holding the stupid opinion that the wall will eventually give up and which side is the wall.

well, I believe the issue is practically this:

Which of course that is an ad hoc assumption. There isn't any objective, valid, empirical evidence supporting it really, much to the contrary.

However, Creationists believe Evolution posits a theological problem, and I pressume it is because it contradicts the idea of what Creationism represents and Creationism seems to represent a perfect happy world from a perfect God, I mean the idea is of a Paradise, it is practically the basis for the idea of the after-life or post-end-of-the-world paradise, a world in which everything that once was perfect will become perfect again, a world in which predators don't eat meat anymore, as described in Isaiah 65:25. This represents hope for a better world for these people, according to their own theology, and the hope the idea represents seems to have been demonstrated by AngelRho, therefore the need to reject Evolution.




And.... of course, STRIDENTLY FREE THINKERS and not so stridently consider that irrational.


Once again, Evolution does not necessarily disprove God to all Christians. Catholics and liberal christians, in general, accept Evolution, and reject Creationism, I imagine Orwell being somehow pissed off with the idea of connecting Creationism with Christianity as a whole.
The problem with "Creation Science" is that it is ad hocness disguised as Science and the danger of this idea is that implies that any junk idea could be accepted as Science.

And I don't buy that it really makes such a profound theological problem. I mean, Copernican astronomy also posed some theological problems in that it posited that Earth (and thus man) actually was not the center of creation. Christianity got over that issue, and if it is to survive it must move past thinking evolution is a problem. The description of Eden seems to work fine as being a parable of the pre-civilization/pre-agricultural stage of humanity, or perhaps even earlier as before humans were fully developed in our modern form.



Really, the majority of Christians are neither Biblical Literalists nor Young Earth Creationists. I do grow sick of the idea, constantly put forth by Creationists and largely unchallenged by others, that Creationists are somehow more Christian than non-Creationists.

So tell me, do you believe Adam and Eve evolved from apes?

And now you're mixing Biblical Literalism with evolutionary history, which is just surreal.

There's nothing modern about creationism.

You said that some Christians don't believe in Creationism. Please do not tell me they don't believe in Adam and Eve.