1

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:54:43 AM »

Neither do illustrations.

I was talking about the illustrations. The illustrations (Haeckel's) look nothing like real embryos. This is in response to you saying that illustrations make things more clear.

Look at the link you yourself provided. Piltdown, for one.

You point out the bias that I used as an example of really bad science (the teeth were filed!) that was finally admitted to being a hoax after 40 years and after there were other alternatives. Not sure this is a good example for you.

Then don't ask after history.

Evolution is a historical assumption.

Evolution is attempted to be falsified every time a fossil is unearthed or a genome examined. One flaw, it all comes crashing down. It has not, and it's that simple. The fact is, all the ways that could falsify evolution (a lack of genetic similarities, a lack of the ability to mutate, a lack of consistency and order in the fossil record...) fail to, and then you have sites such as creation.com that treat all this as a given, and complain that there aren't more tests, because the ones that have been done don't fall in line with the agenda they've set out.

It's really not that simple, unfortunately. Time for a review, I suppose? 1) genetic similarities do not have anything to do with relation. http://creation.com/human-ape-dna 2) We do not have the ability to mutate new information to create new kinds. This has never been observed, but evolution hopes it is true based on the fact that we have rapid speciation, which is a completely different thing. 3) There is a ridiculous amount of inconsistencies with the fossil record. I have brought this up too many times to count. Finally, if you're referring to the offers for creation.com to fund carbon dating in things like dinosaurs, with the offers being turned down curiously, that is all I can think of that you would be referring to in the last part of your argument.

But we know for a fact that this source exists: and that the means for development do exist.

No, we don't know that we have any blueprints for the developments that were necessary to get what we have today. Again, we have speculated that we have what is necessary, but this has actually never been observed. We rely on things like the fossil record to support this, which is terribly lacking in evidence. Again, this is history that we analyze. That is all we have. Also, as you would be hasty to repeat, I'm sure, we observe things like speciation within yeasts, bacteria, and species. I will repeat yet again, this is not evidence for evolution. It's a different kind of information, and mutations do more harm than good. There's also the entropy problem that I stated earlier.

Again, 1 is not a presupposition. 1 does not enter into it. The only remotely close thing that occurs is that "God is not necessary," and this is a result of "Don't assume more than what is required," and your second 'presupposition' too is a result. You've been corrected on this multiple times, stop ignoring it, just because it happens to be inconvenient for you.

This is where I'm thinking our argument is done. I keep repeating myself, and you're too closed-minded to see your philosophical flaw. The only reason why God wouldn't be necessary is if we could have arrived by chance, which is an assumption. God is completely necessary because we couldn't have arrived by chance, and we have far too much evidence for design. There is also too much going against evolutionary "evidence" and too many inconsistencies for it to be science or true. Evolution becomes the "necessary entity" if you refuse to believe that God is necessary. Here's the thing, JRowe: There has to be a necessary entity. It's either God, or evolution by chance. To state otherwise is to be clearly so blinded by your bias that you don't make any philosophical sense.

If you have anymore questions about God for personal reasons, do not hesitate to PM me. Otherwise, I don't see how we can proceed from here. Thanks for your time, and have a happy rest of the holiday season. =)

PS Do you mind revealing your age? I'm so curious. I won't use it against you.

2

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 26, 2015, 11:58:28 PM »

Why not use actual photos all the time instead of illustrations? Illustrations make things clearer.

If you knew what Haeckel's forged embryo illustration looked like, you probably wouldn't be arguing this point. They look nothing like real embryos, first of all, and secondly, photos of actual embryos are much more clear. The thing that isn't "clear," however, is that we come from fish. But this way of teaching that philosophy should've been thrown out long ago with the medicinal leeches.

And yet they've successfully peered through the bias to refute claims multiple times.

Like?

Find a reliable source which goes against what another source says.
There are numerous slanderous rumours about historical figures: how do we know they're just rumours? Source work. It's not a direct analogue because of course it woudln't, you're comparing two completely different topics, but it's more than possible to falsify a historical view.

I was asking if you had any examples of how evolution has been attempted to be falsified.

And we'll focus on the latter point, because it addresses your final paragraph as well. Which worldview makes more sense?
Take evolution's "What if we all came from wherever?" That is not a beginning: that is a consequence of a separate presupposition. Why? Because it is not a presupposition to claim we came from somewhere. That's necessary. The creationist appends that with a separate presupposition: an entity unnecessary. One who accepts evolution, instead, relies only on that which we have observed to be the case, combined with deduction. Both those steps exist and are used by creationists, so no extra presupposition is involved.

It is necessary to say that we came from somewhere, but it is not necessary to say that we came from pond scum. We have not observed this to "be the case," and saying deduction does not make it anymore scientific. A presupposition still remains. The one that 1) there is no God and 2) our origins and life, and everything else we see, is what it is because of an accident in pond scum. And that is what makes more sense to you.

3

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 26, 2015, 12:57:34 AM »

I think farces are pretty interesting. That's what led me to this site. =)

And when those inaccuracies are meant as any more than illustrations of a theory, maybe you'd have a point.

Well I'd like to know what Haeckel's embryos in certain text books are supposed to illustrate if nothing other than the falsehood that we go through our evolutionary stages in the womb and have gills lol. Why not use actual photos of the embryo stages? We've gotten farther in our knowledge and technology. Why not put those to good use? But alas, this topic is rather "boring."

That's exactly what what you're saying relies upon.

No, then you misunderstand me. What I'm saying is that yes, they are willing to stretch the truth to let the information fit into their worldview. No, I don't think scientists and evolutionists are generally liars. I think they believe (probably) what they see fits into their worldview and are afraid of the alternative. A lot of what we hear from them stems from a bias.

Well said. Try applying the same reasoning.

I do, which is why I try and educate myself as much as possible on evolution. It's important that I know what I'm arguing against and why. So far I haven't seen any good refutations of my arguments. I've been this into evolution/creation since I was a kid. That doesn't make me an expert on the subject, but I do take the time to learn.

Just because something is not falsified, doesn't mean it's not falsifiable. There are countless ways for evolution to be falsified; you get plenty of them listed every time there's a debate on evolution. The fact is none of them happen.

Can you give me an example of how historical science could be falsifiable and how it has been tried?

Which is why I specified deduction as well. You can't just ignore literally half of what I said. You can't do any science without deduction: even observations won't tell you anything unless you use logic to deduce why it happened, and when it would.

Any deduction that one makes has to stem from a ... guess what? It's that word again, presupposition. Anything from the past must be analyzed with an already present worldview. Creationists can take the same data and fit it into their worldview. It only depends on which worldview makes the most sense to you.

Because evolution is not the presupposition. Do I need to repeat myself again?

It doesn't seem to help that I also keep repeating myself: evolution is a presupposition. This always kicks atheists in the pants, because they think attacking theists with the "p" word really works for some reason. I've already explained multiple times, very reasonably, why evolution is a presupposition. Darwin speculated, "What if we all came from pond scum?" (not verbatim, but I can get the quote if you want it) and that's where it all began, my friend. A speculation. Speculations = presuppositions. All the "evidence" has to fit into this bias, and if it doesn't, it is excused. For example, mammals are usually found with dinosaurs, and there are 430 species of mammals found in dinosaur age strata, only seven to 10 of which have modern counterparts thus far. Furthermore, when paleontologists find dinosaur bones or dinosaur trace fossils in the Cenozoic they are almost always ‘redated’ or claimed ‘reworked’ and put into the Mesozoic. There are lots of examples of this kind of work. It's short of blatant lying, but I always give people the benefit of a doubt: I think that they look at this type of stuff as "mistakes" that need to be looked at again in order for it to all fit into an evolutionary worldview because otherwise it "doesn't make sense."

4

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 24, 2015, 11:52:33 PM »

Most illustrations in science books are lies by that definition.



That's a lie. No skeletons look exactly like drawings, or stand up in a 2-D row like that. It illustrates an idea: that's all.

I don't view this example as the same things that were mentioned. There's a difference between blatant inaccuracies without clarifications and what you show above. There is no need to put fine print like, "no skeletons look exactly like drawings or stand up in a 2-D row like this." Sometimes I think you really know better than what you let on, though.

As for the Piltdown Man, you're still ignoring the fact it was scientists who exposed it as a lie: something you now claim they're unable to do.

I'm not claiming that scientists are unable to expose lies. But let's look closer. Is it really a victory for evolutionists that they were able to figure out that something was a hoax after studying it for 40 years? The timing was interesting, too, as there were other candidates lined up to take Piltdown Man's place right away.

Would you like me to link you to a site filled with arguments against God and the Bible? I'm sure there are plenty. Sure, given time you might be able to respond to them all. What would stop me saying, after that, "There is always an excuse for why things don't match up."
If there's an answer to your question, then maybe it's not as major as you evidently think.

The difference is that arguments against God and the Bible on secular sites are pretty uneducated from my experience. I've never seen an argument that had the theology right, although sometimes it's a matter of not understanding what the author was trying to convey in a passage. Anyway, if evolution can explain everything away and fit everything to fit "just so," then it's not falsifiable, and it's not science. And it's not.

If by 'presupposition' you mean 'deductions or observations confirmed or shown to be reasonable by repeated testing.'

Nope, not what I meant at all. Observations can only be made in the here and now. Historical science only requires interpretation of the observations, guesses about what might have been, and a worldview that shapes it all. One cannot repeat history to test it. So what you described is not evolution.

And again, I say the exact same thing, as you seem to have ignored:
My presupposition is to invoke as few unnecessary entities as possible. I'd assume we share that: it's applicable to more than just evolution. So, on this topic, while I technically do have an involved presupposition, it's a general one that we share. You're the one that relies on a separate presupposition.
The point is not that you have a presupposition, it's that you have an unnecessary one.

God is not unnecessary. Evolution is. See, arguments like that don't really work for debating other philosophies without more meat to it. Why is evolution the necessary presupposition? Why is God the unnecessary one?

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 23, 2015, 11:02:48 PM »

And even that's down to interpretation. To be a liar is wrong: is it against God to say "This statement is a lie?" Lines are rarely clearly defined; and sometimes you can only choose between the lesser of two evils.

It's not that difficult to get, is it? Everybody will lie at some point in his or her life. The point I was trying to make is that one's lifestyle cannot be one in a lie and yet also be following after God. You cannot serve two masters. Either you serve God or you serve yourself. So if you are living a lie and wish to be a child of God, he will help your heart change so that you no longer are wishing to be a liar and are uncomfortable enough to change, with the wisdom he gives you.

Read your own link. Beyond a handful of inexplicable criticisms of simplifications intended to make it easier to understand what's being said, there's the Piltdown Man/Piltdown Bird exposed by scientists as fakes: knowledge which caught on, and no scientist will use them as evidence.

I did read my own link, and maybe you should read it again. The "handful" of examples are falsehoods that were not exposed until at least years later, 40 years later for Piltdown Man. The fake examples of evolution were continuously published in school books, and the forged Haeckel embryo pictures still are, apparently. So we're not talking about "simplifications" here. We're talking about lies.

except you have apparently decide dthat even though scientists have exposed falsehoods relating to the theory, and made sure no one would take some (ancient) examples as evidence, they're incapable of seeing through the flaws they work with daily. That just doesn't make sense.

It's not a simple as "flaws," although there are indeed some flaws that are overlooked because it doesn't "make sense" to evolutionary theory. There is always an excuse for why things don't match up. I can see that I need to present more examples, and there are examples in every field of evolutionary study, so it's hard to just tell you. I'll give you a couple of articles that I may or may not have read, but I think they might explain what I mean when I say that scientists use a lot of presuppositions in their studies to fit what they find into the theory. They do this in the dating methods, in the fossil record, and when they find things they shouldn't find, like unfossilized dinosaur bones. This is an article about the fossil record and assumptions: http://creation.com/index-fossils This one is about fresh dino blood: http://creation.com/sensational-dinosaur-blood-report  This one is about unfossilized dino bones (and media bias): http://creation.com/unpermineralized-hadrosaur-bones-alaska  This one is about radiometric dating: http://creation.com/the-way-it-really-is-little-known-facts-about-radiometric-dating And this one is about carbon dating: http://creation.com/radiometric-dating-breakthroughs  But what's interesting to me is that we began our discussion with you stating that you distrusted scientists and refused to defend dating methods. Yet you seem ready to defend these "scientists" to the end now.

My presupposition is to invoke as few unnecessary entities as possible. I'd assume we share that: it's applicable to more than just evolution. So, on this topic, while I technically do have an involved presupposition, it's a general one that we share. You're the one that relies on a separate presupposition.

Whatever the reason for your presupposition or for mine, you keep stating that I have one, as if you don't. So every time you say that I have one, I'll remind you that you have one too. Because everyone has one. So it's an invalid argument.

Which are only designed if you ignore alternatives.

Or, they are only not designed if you ignore the possibility of God and search for other alternatives.

6

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 21, 2015, 01:05:09 AM »

It took me awhile to respond because I didn't get a notification of your response. This is the second time this has happened, but on a different forum. I decided to check independently. Not sure who to tell if it keeps happening. "Notify me of replies." is always checked. Maybe a moderator could help me out? Thanks.

No True Scotsman. Clear fallacy. If you define Christian to preclude such things, sure: but an actually workable definition would be one who believes, or thinks they believe, in the relevant God. Are you really claiming all such people are good? People misinterpret, it's well known.

You're right about the definition of a Christian, but the Bible also says that there are "fruit" or signs of being an actual Christian. To be a thief or a liar as one's lifestyle would be in direct defiance of God and who he wants us to be. If we love God, we will not want to grieve him, and we will have a heart to love others as well. This would mean leaving a lifestyle of selfishness, and to live the way he wants us to.

That's simply untrue. Are you imagining an absurd conspiracy? That's what the denial of evolution amounts to. With no reason, for no gain, thousands and millions of people gather, compare evidence, and don't notice the flaws. two people developed the theory of evolution independently and simultaneously. The evidence is there. Simply because you've chosen to reject it won't do away with that evidence.

No, I am not imagining an absurd conspiracy, and I'm sure you don't have any of your own, either. =) There is plenty of reason to follow after evolution if the alternative is to accept God. There are many who would rather believe aliens planted us here. As far as gain, only what every other scientist gains by discovering things, writing books on things, selling to schools, the Nobel Prize, etc. right? I'm not saying that they don't believe what they see is true, but there are presuppositions before they examine the "evidence," and it will fit into whatever agenda they have, even if it means stretching the truth. This is weird but true: http://creation.com/evolutionist-its-ok-to-deceive-students-to-believe-evolution

I have also learned that "misplaced" fossils in the fossil record are excused, and dating methods have quite a lot of presuppositions involved. All these evolutionists who "come together" is a pretty fantastical picture, anyway. The truth is that each scientist has their own special field of study, and they all trust each other's fields to find the answers that they need (that they themselves may be lacking). But what happens when they don't, or if what they find discredits the theory? Bill Stein's Expelled is a documentary about just that. If you don't agree with evolution, you're kicked out. So yes, in a sense, that is a conspiracy. But it's been proven.

As far as your claim that there were two individuals who developed the theory of evolution independently and simultaneously, are you thinking of Russell Wallace? Because the only thing he and Darwin both realized individually was "survival of the fittest" which is not evolution. In fact, a creationist by the name of Blythe wrote about that 25 years earlier.

First, unjustified. Second, barely. Even by the God's own words, it was worshipped only in a limited geographical area for several thousand years: if you believe a literal Genesis then that's your only justification for the claim, and it still falls flat because there was no such worship going on outside the middle east.

What is unjustified? That people look to the powers of crystals? I live in a hippy town. I know these things. Secondly, I don't know what you're talking about with the middle east and all that crap, or why that would discredit anything if it's true. If there was a great flood as the Bible says there was, any evidence of man-made things would be gone before that. Any evidence of worship afterwards would have started in the middle east, because that's where they landed and began their new life. But the only evidence I can think of of God-worship in those days would be altars and then the ancient scrolls to document the history. You might have fun searching creation.com for archeological finds. It's quite interesting.

If you look for it. Most of the world you would see is designed anyhow: humans built and maintain most of it. As for literal design though, that's a presupposition through and through.

Again, you must have a presupposition to believe in evolution or God. If you look for design and find it, but decide not to believe, that's your choice. Incidentally, have you heard of Fibonacci? I just learned about him. Fascinating: http://creation.com/golden-numbers

But we're not talking about maintenance of yards here, we're talking about our own bodies, the cell, the genome, DNA, a fingerprint, a flower, a snowflake, the creatures of the ocean, the katydid, sand dollars, are just some that come to mind. People don't maintain these obviously designed things, but to turn a blind eye to it is definitely a choice of preference as to what to believe in.

7

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 18, 2015, 11:55:27 PM »

Ultimately, semantics. You do good, you're rewarded: you failed, you're damned. Whether you're rewarded for doing good, or simply not punished, the end result is the same.

I'm not sure I understand your argument. I thought you were saying that an atheist has more "meaning" when they do good because Christians "have" to do good in order to enter eternity. I was just trying to clarify, because it's a common misconception.

A convenient stereotype for you to use to demonize. Certainly, there are bad atheists out there, just as there are Christians who use the faithful to line their pockets or as an excuse for cruelty.

There is no genuine Christian who steals and is cruel. We make mistakes, but to deliberately do something like this is to not be in real relationship with God. There are people who profess to be Christians who steal and who are cruel, for sure.

God still designed us. Did he not know how we'd develop after temptation?

Yes, and he knew it would be worth it. He wanted us to have free will so that we could choose to follow him or someone/something else. He wants us to choose him back, because that's what love is. It's a 2-way relationship, like in a marriage, or the relationship between a parent and a child. The end result is a few things: 1) We know we need a God, that we aren't on equal ground with him. 2) We know what sin does, we know what a fallen world looks like, and this causes us to appreciate the perfect world we will inherit, and causes us to see how perfect God is. 3) Sin led to the ultimate display of love: God's sacrifice to save our lives. In this way he proved how much he loves us. These are probably not all the reasons, but some that come to mind anyway.

How do you figure? Do you expect humanity to be omniscient?

I don't understand. I'm saying that because we know more about the human body and the world around us, it causes us to see how we're clearly designed and that evolution goes against true science. Most of what Darwin believed has been proven to be false today because of what we've found out. Therefore, since we can know more now about how evolution is not true and the complexity of our universe and our bodies, we should be more skeptical of evolution and more accepting of the idea of a creator.

It explains far more than you give it credit for. The only thing you've accused it of not explaining, that it does not explain, is the origin of life: and that's because it's not meant to. There are multiple models for abiogenesis, no one being confirmed until we know more of the initial state.

Disagree. It explains absolutely nothing successfully.

Theyw orship them, but they don't blame a god for them. No one believes the Sun is literally carried by a chariot.
And people did believed in God centuries ago: a very different God to the one you accept.

No, they think they themselves are a god or that the crystals have god-ish powers. The very same God I worship today is the same God that has been worshiped since the beginning of time.

Your first question is an interetsing one: does my wall look less designed than Da Vinci's ceilings? Well, yes; but is it, really? If anything, my wall is more deisgned: whole teams would have worked to construct, and paint, and repaint it. Da Vinci's were mostly just one person's work. Ultimately, if either is more designed, it's the wall; or at least, they're evenly designed. There's no particular difference between the designers, only the purpose.
Perhaps determining design from eyesight alone isn't so simple?
If you want to compare nature to smashed up furniture, however, it's pretty easy. What we observe as designed is far more streamlined, for an express purpose. In reality, I look out and I see uneven ground, and plants fighting for space, and leaves dying and making a mess. There are a lot of ways to improve on that design.

To the first part of your reply, fair enough, but I was trying to merely point out the surface of the ceiling, and I should have said "paint job" or something of that sort. Yes, it's a different type of design, but if we were to compare it to the artwork-type of design of Da Vinci, the comparison would be plain to see.

You can look out and see the results of the fall (when sin entered the world), but you can also see bits of heaven, too. We have both. We have "smashed up" design, sure, but it was still design to begin with, and that's easy to see.

8

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 17, 2015, 10:05:36 PM »

A place of vitriol and dishonesty, the exact same as yours. When an atheist does good, as many do, they do it because it is good: they have no hope of a reward. For an atheist, everything we do has actual meaning: it's not a drop in eternity, it's a finite life, ruled by experience: and those experiences have far more weight.

We, as Christians, are not rewarded for doing good at all, actually. We inherit our Father's inheritance when we accept him as our Father, and that's it. It has nothing to do with doing good or bad. We naturally try to do good because it's the essence of who God is and we're striving to be more like him, but fail. Even though you do good, you also fail. You fail when you cuss people out, you fail when you have a bad attitude, you fail when you lie, or cheat, or lust after someone. And so do I. So we both do good because we have "experiences" and know what good is. But really, if this life is all we have, you might say "then party on!" and do whatever you want, regardless of the consequences, as many do. Many atheists live for themselves and "screw the rest." But good for you for trying to do better in your life.

But sure, blindly claim all atheists "are not comfortable giving up their lifestyles," and even ignoring the fundamental flaw with a God who would design a people more comfortable to do what he forbids, it's about as meaningful a claim as mine was.

Even though it's more comfortable and easy to make mistakes, we still all know what the better option is. I wonder what atheism could explain about that (why it's more comfortable to make mistakes). Anyway, temporary pleasure with long-term bad consequences are what God forbids. He designed us to be perfect, as I said closer to the beginning of our discussion, but we fell into temptation, which was partly allowed because God wanted to show us that we need him. He's taken care of the ultimate consequence though (death).

"I don't know, so it must be God." You can say the same about anything, heading back and forth through history. Once the Sun was a god: now we understand it.

But we DO know. As you said, we understand the sun. We also understand a lot more now about our bodies and the world around us. So we're even more without excuse now that we know more. Because evolution has not been able to explain why we have what we have, especially BECAUSE we know so much. And by the way, even when there were still people worshiping the sun, people believed in God. Some people still worship the sun, stars, crystals, etc. So I'm not sure how much that has to do with knowledge.

And as a general rule, hermits are not accepted scientific sources. I'm not sure what else you expect me to say.
But, of course, beyond all explanations for seeming design, the simple question is what do we compare it to? if you know for a fact that something is designed, you must know what something naturally developed looks like. Can you provide an example? As it is, you seem to have claimed everything is designed: so what can we possibly compare that design to?

Yes, I can give you an example of things that are not designed. Look around your house. Look at your ceiling. Look at a blank wall. Is that more designed or less designed than say, Leonardo Da Vinci's ceilings? Do you have any smashed up objects? Do you have any kits that haven't been assembled yet? We have lot of examples of things that are designed, but we can also compare things that are less designed than others. So somehow, we all know what it means to be "designed."

9

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 16, 2015, 10:45:25 PM »

A discussion, such as we're having, is pointless if your default is simply going to be to assume that you're right and any alternative is wrong. Finding an argument is false doesn't imply your conclusion is.

I'd like to think that if either of us have learned anything during this discussion, then it was not pointless.

Or I could say that people seek out God because it gives them a sense of superiority, because they're able to feel chosen, or the centre/purpose for the whole of creation, and that many people who think that there is a God do so out of ego.
See how easy it is to make assumptions? They're little more than bald faced stereotypes in an attempt to discredit. I don't know if this is what you intended or not, but 99% of the time that's exactly where that chain of reasoning comes from.

Well, you could say that, but where does that assumption come from? Because all the legitimate Christians that I know would probably be surprised at your surmise. Actually, it's quite humbling to say that "I need God" because "I am a sinner" and "need forgiveness." with the hope of everlasting life. I certainly don't and never did have a sense of superiority or ego about the matter; quite the opposite. God chose all of us, so there's no special circumstance there with me. The only difference is that I chose to accept his gift. My favorite author, C.S. Lewis, wrote that he accepted God "kicking and screaming" so to speak, because it wasn't what he wanted, but he knew better. Then he was "surprised by joy" at the result. This attitude of superiority that you speak of would certainly go against Jesus' words when he said to be a servant and showed that example by washing his disciple's feet, to pray for those who mistreat you, and that the last would be first and the first last. He sat and dined with the lowly sinners and showed strong disfavor with those who thought they were superior. So if anyone had this attitude of superiority, it would be in direct conflict with what they state to believe in. If the signs of their behavior are not in accordance with Jesus, then they are truly not followers of his.

If there's a maker who wants belief, it should be easy to arrive at it with more than what are at best arguments from ignorance.

I really don't know what you mean by "arguments from ignorance," but I would strongly agree that God actually has made it quite easy to believe in him. As I said before, our world looks designed. Even Dawkins has admitted this, poor guy. If there was a hermit who lived all alone, without any communication with others, he would examine the world around him. If he weren't a fool, he would see the clearly designed features of his own self and the world around him. If he were able to look at a snowflake, his suspicion would be confirmed. If he were able to learn about the cell, same result. But as I said, we have the evidence around us. If the hermit were able to seek out God from his discoveries, he would find him, just as God promised we would. If we have eyes and a mind, we are without excuse.

10

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 15, 2015, 11:19:45 PM »

If you're going to begin under the assumption that we were all created by God, then sure, but then what is the point of examining an alternative theory?

Interesting question. I'm not sure if you mean me personally or people in general. To begin with, I'll say that I'm not examining another theory (just to clarify). I'm just trying to explain my point of view, but I also enjoy learning about other people's point of view.

If you meant people in general, well, you must begin with an assumption either way. If you want to assume there is no God, nor seek him out to find out if he's real, I would assume it's because it feels uncomfortable to do so. Many people think that if there is a God that they would be held accountable for the way they live, and they're not comfortable giving up their lifestyles. But they don't know the joy, true freedom, and peace that comes from having a relationship with our maker. It's truly awesome. But it's like swimming in the tropical ocean before anyone else and exclaiming, "come on in! The water's fine!" But you wouldn't know it unless you tried it for yourself. And that's where you no longer need to rely on the scientific facts and the why's and how's (they just become fun and enhance what you already know to be true). Because once you're in the water, you know. But it takes logic sometimes to bring in the others with you. And that's why it's my duty and joy to give this a shot with you and anyone else who may be reading along.

11

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 14, 2015, 11:22:02 PM »

Which remains incoherent no matter how much you repeat it. Imagine a father that let their child die. How do you imagine those genes would be passed on?
This has been explained to you multiple times. Repitition does not make an argument.

I think the main problem is that I'm coming from the end of origins to what we have today, and you're looking at today and saying that the benefits explain the origins. This doesn't fit. It's backwards logic. Yes, we have children due to the sacrifices of parents and in spite of the fact that young deplete nourishment from their parents (and sanity, in the case of humans). But it is being repeated over and over because I feel like it's not getting through. But this will be the last time I try to explain it. Benefits do not explain origin. There is a process, no matter how "simple" you think it was to begin with, (we observe nothing simple in nature), that wouldn't proceed to anything. The idea that there was some primitive part of reproduction that was beneficial to survival, then grew, is mere speculation. Survival of the fittest and reproduction are against each other in every way. It couldn't have been an accident. And I think we all know better.

12

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 13, 2015, 09:59:57 PM »

I'm comparing principles. Evolution won't immediately erase any change, especially not that which is relatively neutral to survival benefit.

What, exactly, was relatively neutral to survival benefit (in the beginning when the parts were just forming), and where is the evidence for it? Also, it's not only that. We'd have to have the correct order of parts coming together, surviving, then creating a more complex structure (as in all complicated systems or parts). I'm assuming you've thought of this?

There is plenty of reason.

It doesn't matter if there is plenty of reason. That doesn't explain the origin.

Do you feel like addressing any of this, or are you simply going to ignore it and repeat, yet again, the unjustified claim that reproduction is somehow not beneficial?

Sex has many disadvantages, e.g., only 50 percent of the genes are passed on to an offspring. This means that there is a 50 percent chance of losing a beneficial mutation. And in a stable population (i.e., not changing the number of individuals), there is on average one surviving offspring per parent, so asexual reproduction is twice as efficient at passing on genes to the next generation. Sex also means that an optimal gene configuration can never be passed on in its entirety.

It is also biologically costly to maintain the sex organs, and to maintain mechanisms to stop the male’s immune system destroying his own (genetically different) sperm, and stop the female’s immune system destroying incoming sperm or the offspring she carries (in viviparous organisms). And, sometimes sexual displays can be cumbersome and make the organism more vulnerable. Females obviously expend a lot of time and energy if they must bear live young. It takes energy to find a mate, otherwise the organism will die without passing on its genes, and if one sex is eliminated, the species will become extinct. It’s a lot of trouble, considering that asexual organisms such as bacteria reproduce very quickly.

Of course I posed problems in the past, such as the example of the father penguin who will practically starve himself to sit on his chicks. Again, where did this instinct come from? Another accident that contradicts the survival instinct? A problem I have brought up before, but there is no evolutionary solution. Justified enough for ya?

13

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 11, 2015, 09:19:55 PM »

So? That doesn't cause impossibility. I don't need to have brown hair, so what? It doesn't need to happen, but it was beneficial: it would let different parts focus on different things.

Well, now we're comparing the reproductive system and accompanying need to make sure your young survive with hair color. As I said before, survival of the fittest is about having the traits that make you more adaptable than other creatures who do not possess what you have, in order to survive. Yes, we can carry on genes of brown hair accidentally (so to speak), but carrying on all the parts and pieces that eventually create the reproductive system when there is no other reason for those parts to form, without a designer, is completely absurd.

14

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 09, 2015, 10:59:56 PM »

If it's not good enough for you, that's a problem with you, not the theory. It wouldn't develop on the macro scale you're imagining: it would develop on a small scale, which would allow the macro scale to develop.

It wouldn't develop at all, because it wouldn't need to.

I answered this: "feelings are, by definition, subjectively meaningful." You know what a feeling is: what we feel. From the perspective of our experiences, they thus mean something.

I'll just tell you, in case you didn't know, feelings from a materialist's worldview are just chemical reactions. In other words, they don't really mean anything, but you think that they do because they give you a sense of euphoria, that things are "okay," which is also a chemical reaction. Feelings are the soda in a bottle, and meaning is the Mento that you add to it.

Only if the object in question is something tangible.

Love is tangible, in a sense. But really, this argument is going nowhere.

15

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 08, 2015, 11:18:46 PM »

We do feel the urge to pass on the gene. Outliers aside (to be expected in an evolutionary system), most people have a sex drive, a lot of people are interested in kids...
And you wouldn't need intelligence. The system would have developed with organisms too simple to pass on: it likely would have been accidental, at first. Little more than cells sliding over cells.
It just developed, as life does.

This "just developed" theory isn't good enough for me. Again, one would need to survive a trait long enough for it to develop and be passed down, but this complicated reproductive system is not crucial to survive. It doesn't fit into the "survival of the fittest" model, and my article further explained that it actually detracts from being fit for survival. But if we can't go on from here, we must agree to disagree on the probability of reproduction and all its implications.

I'm not sure how the question is meant to mean anything. You're asking after a definition of a definition. It is meaningful because it is a meaningful feeling: because feelings are, by definition, subjectively meaningful.

So if love is a "meaningful feeling," what makes it meaningful, and what is a feeling?

And in doing so, relied on a further presupposition.

Again, the question for any axiomatic system is whether it is self-consistent and is consistent with the real world. If it's truly consistent with itself and with the real world, there is no presupposition in that statement. It's either true or it's not. There are various reasons, some of which I have stated in the above posts, as to why creationism makes more sense to me and is more consistent with the real world, from what I've observed, than evolution. You may disagree, and that is fine.

As far as love being objective, if agreement is what defines objectivity then it would be, but that seems a rather weak definition of the term.

Again, it's not an opinion as to whether or not the car exists. The car exists, and you're an idiot if you deny that it exists. Therefore, it doesn't matter if you agree or not. The car/love is there either way. So no, objectivity does not depend on agreement. It depends on the truth of an object existing outside of opinion.

16

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 07, 2015, 10:01:15 PM »

I think I better understand your second to last argument in the last post. So, you were saying that I said my presupposition was better because I preferred it without further explanation. But that's not true. I explained why I thought mine made more sense in regards to how the world works. So either you're forgetting things now or you haven't been paying attention.

17

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 07, 2015, 08:21:39 PM »

The vast majority of what you've said about evolution has been a quote from another source. You don't need to know anything to do that: and you have tired me out because you are demanding nothing except repitition. You have an utterly incoherent view of how genes would be passed on (apparently genes can be passed on without a child surviving, that makes no sense), and depending on what you mean by reproduction, that's either irrelevant or answered. The very first system of reproduction could not have evolved by Darwinian means because it would require reproduction: but two-person reproduction could evolve very easily, given it began in highly simplified organisms: bacteria and the like. Bacteria colonies wouldn't need every element to be capable of everything: they'd 'work together'.

You're right, I have quoted from another source because there's just so much information and it's hard to think of all the details. But I have learned quite a bit, and I'm sure you have too.

You have completely and repeatedly misunderstood what I'm saying about genes being passed down. I'm not sure whose fault that is. I would be an idiot indeed if I were to not understand that in order for genes to be passed down, one must have the "urge" to pass those genes down. I get that. What I don't understand is that from an evolutionary worldview, how one must have developed that need in the first place, since we can survive individually without feeling the need to pass on the gene. I suppose you would say that we accidentally felt the need to pass the gene down, or that someone did, and that someone would've also developed the sexual reproductive system and then, voila, you've got babies. But anyway, it's just too impossible and too close to intelligence.

Creationists can explain the origin of fully functioning sexual reproduction, from the start, in an optimal and genetically diverse population. Once the mechanisms are already in place, they have these advantages. But simply having advantages doesn’t remotely explain how they could be built from scratch. The hypothetical transitional forms would be highly disadvantageous, so natural selection would work against them. In many cases, the male and female genitalia are precisely tuned so one could fit the other, meaning that they could not have evolved independently. I'll give you another article if you're interested. https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j18_1/j18_1_120-127.pdf

I thought we had as well, but you are the only who denied it.

This is so weird, because I never denied it. In fact, I admitted that I do have a presupposition, but also explained that you did too, in which case you actually denied it. I went on to explain why you did. You may want to review it, but it's there.
 

I openly said I was?! I was calling out your hypocrisy in saying your defined meaning was better when your only justification was preferring your presupposition.

Obviously we prefer our presuppositions, or else we wouldn't have any opinions about the world now would we? And you also said that yours was better, so...

So, you're admitting you're just ignoring my arguments, and not even bothering to respond now?

I just don't see how we can get past the subjective/objective argument. I asked you to explain to me why love logically means anything to you, but you actually ignored that question. But if you wish, I don't have a problem putting more thought into it, since more thoughts actually came to me. Love is an object, like a car is an object. It's not an opinion. We can't say "the car isn't there" by opinion, because the truth is that the car is there, no matter what we say. So is love. Love is not subjective, because to say so would be to say that love is an opinion. But love cannot disappear. Everyone in the entire world from every culture, tribe, religion, and worldview, needs love. This is why I say that love is objective. I'm just wondering if we weren't clear on the definition before.

18

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 07, 2015, 01:12:50 AM »

Sorry, don't understand this comment.

Subjectivity is all that exists in the absence of God. Your arguments that what we do is somehow less is founded on comparing it with an irrelevant paradigm. It's always going to be possible to construct a 'better' state of affairs, that doesn't mean anything. What matters is the inside of one particular model.

Love being meaningful, again, is not a presupposition. Everyone everywhere would agree that love is meaningful. The difference between love from God and love from chemicals is that chemicals make feelings and ideas not any more meaningful in the logical sense than a lab experiment. But if love is not just a chemical reaction and exists beyond the material body to who God is, that gives it true meaning. Then it's no longer a series of chemical reactions that we can't help but follow like robots, but we begin to realize that love is more than that. It's a choice but it's also the most powerful force in all the world. An interesting thought is that love of oneself isn't stronger than love for another individual, like your own child, since the need to survive would be the most important force in evolution.

That is the definition of a presupposition. You have decided that something not resulting from 'chemical reactions' is meaningful, presumably because matter and chemicals somehow make it lesser for no adequately explained reason. It's hard to see your own presuppositions, but they're clearly there.
You have already been told how your view of evolution is incoherent. The definition of evolution is doing what would help your offspring survive. That is the definition. Of course you need to survive to have offspring, so that is part of it, but if you didn't care for your children they wouldn't live and those genes wouldn't be passed on. "since the need to survive would be the most important force in evolution," is a completely inexplicable claim and just shows you know nothing, have taken in nothing, and are completely ignorant of the most fundamental facts about evolution. This is not an insult, this is a fact. if you do not understand that evolution requires that we care for children, you do not understand anything about it.

Well my friend, I think I have already proven in my previous posts that I'm not the least bit uneducated about evolution or any subject that we have discussed this far. However I can see I have tired you out. There has been no adequate answer for my questions on reproduction because there is no adequate answer, period. It doesn't matter anyway, because the reproduction system in itself could not have evolved. I'm done discussing that.

Everyone has a presupposition. You do, I do, everyone does. I thought we got past that. That attack will not work on me because it means nothing when discussing philosophies and beliefs. When it comes to those subjects, everyone in every belief system, including evolution and atheism, has a presupposition. You don't even realize that you're making the same assumptions, only from an atheistic perspective. Now if I've made myself clear enough, you can feel free to explain to me why love means anything to you. I will ignore the obvious flaw in saying love is subjectively valuable. If my explanation of chemicals vs immaterial and God-given doesn't satisfy you, then perhaps you can do better. Tell me why love made out of chemicals has a logical value to it.

19

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 05, 2015, 03:30:09 PM »

Subjectively, there's plenty: and that's all that can exist.

Sorry, don't understand this comment.

That's an urge nonetheless:

Okay, but it's more than that. God didn't just casually decide one day, while sitting on the couch eating potato chips, that he wanted to make people. Anyone with children will understand how you can have a deep desire for them, or if not, at least they can somewhat relate to that kind of love after they've had them.

and notice your presupposition. You claim that God's love makes this meaningful: why? You require this claim to have a basis in a worldview without God, why not in yours?

Love being meaningful, again, is not a presupposition. Everyone everywhere would agree that love is meaningful. The difference between love from God and love from chemicals is that chemicals make feelings and ideas not any more meaningful in the logical sense than a lab experiment. But if love is not just a chemical reaction and exists beyond the material body to who God is, that gives it true meaning. Then it's no longer a series of chemical reactions that we can't help but follow like robots, but we begin to realize that love is more than that. It's a choice but it's also the most powerful force in all the world. An interesting thought is that love of oneself isn't stronger than love for another individual, like your own child, since the need to survive would be the most important force in evolution.

20

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 05, 2015, 10:42:42 AM »

Ugh.  JR, there's a paragraph in there that may be confusing. It starts with "what about creation vs evolution?" Or something like that and it's from the article. The sudden capitalized letters beginning sentences like "How evolution harms science" are links to other articles. But I don't think it transferred over. I was going to delete that whole paragraph, but forgot. If you want to read the articles mentioned in that paragraph however, just put the titles in the search engine at creation.com.

21

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 05, 2015, 01:02:02 AM »

You've been given the evidence: you rejected it on the basis that you didn't believe it could happen.

No, I don't remember being given any evidence to support the transformation of one kind into another. You keep saying that mutations and speciation/adaptations are basically the same thing. But if that were true with the rate of speciation, we would see kinds transforming into different kinds right before our eyes.

Aside from the fact the odds would in fact be much larger, because other forms of life are possible, do you think the Earth is all that exists? You're assuming everything happens only on one world: that's nonsense. With billions of worlds, and all of time, and even a multiverse which is possible, those odds are nothing.

I don't understand this. You're saying that because we could have life elsewhere means odds of life here by chance aren't so slim? Wouldn't it be the other way around? Like, because life happened by chance, there could be life elsewhere? But even if there's a God, life could be elsewhere. Simply confused!

I'm not coming at it from the presupposition evolution exists: I am using it as a case of where what we observe matches exactly with what evolution would predict occurs, and using this as evidence.
Just because a pot in your yard's been dug up doesn't prove a cat's done it, but if you observe that, as well as next door having a cat, it's easy to draw a conclusion. Evidence adds up.

Atheism is a presupposition no less than theism. But Darwin had the idea of evolution before he did his research. Then he hoped we would find the evidence that he couldn't (we never did). So evolution is based on a  presupposition. Today's evolutionists interpret the evidence through evolutionary goggles. So everything they see can be interpreted to fit their theories. The atheist paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, made the following candid observation:

“Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes   of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific   method’, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology.”

This is taken from the article titled, "It's not science" from creation.com:

Many evolutionists claim mutations and antibiotic resistance in bacteria as being some sort of prediction of evolution. In fact, genetics was an embarrassment to evolution, which could have been a factor in Mendel’s pioneering genetics research going unrecognized for so many years (Mendel’s discovery of discrete genes did not fit Darwin’s idea of continuous unlimited variation). When mutations were discovered, these were seen as a way of reconciling Darwinism with the observations of operational science—hence the ‘neo-Darwinian’ synthesis of Mayr, Haldane, Fisher, etc.

What about the predictions of evolution vs creation? The track record of evolution is pretty dismal. See How evolution harms science. On the other hand, modern science rides on the achievements of past creationists—see How important to science is evolution? and Contributions of creationist scientists. For one clear example of modern-day scientific predictions based on a creationist model, see Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation.

Many ‘predictions’ of evolutionary theory have been found to be incompatible with observations; and yet evolution reigns. For example, there is the profound absence of the many millions of transitional fossils that should exist if evolution were true (see Are there any Transitional Fossils?). The very pattern in the fossil record flatly contradicts evolutionary notions of what it should be like—see, for example, The links are missing. The evolutionist   Gould wrote at length on this conundrum.

Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, none of the cases of antibiotic resistance, insecticide resistance, etc. that have been studied at a biochemical level have involved de novo origin of new complex genetic information. In fact, evolutionists never predicted antibiotic resistance, because historically it took the medical field by surprise—see Anthrax and antibiotics: Is evolution relevant?

Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, breeding experiments reach limits; change is not unlimited. See the article by the creationist geneticist, Lane Lester. This matches what we would expect from Genesis 1, where it says that God created organisms to reproduce true to their different kinds.

Another failed evolutionary ‘prediction’ is that of ‘junk DNA’. Evolutionists long claimed that 98% of the human DNA is junk, mere leftovers of our supposed evolutionary ancestry. This has hindered the discovery of the function   of this DNA, now known to be at least 80% functional, and probably 100% is functional. See Dazzling DNA.

Evolutionists expected that, given the right conditions, a living cell could make itself (abiogenesis); creationists said this was impossible. Operational science has destroyed this evolutionary notion; so much so that many evolutionists now want to leave the origin of life out of the debate. Many propagandists claim that evolution does not include this, although the theories of abiogenesis are usually called ‘chemical evolution’. See Origin of Life for an explanation of the many profound problems for any conceivable evolutionary scenario.

Note: Claiming fulfilled predictions as proof of a hypothesis is known as the fallacy of affirming the consequent. However, if a prediction is falsified, it amounts to formal disproof of the proposition, so evolution has been formally disproved with multiple failed predictions.

I must assume I have the ability to reason in order to reason. That's true no matter what you believe. The origin of a conscience has been explained to you, and reason is obviously beneficial.

What I meant by that is that we don't know how, evolutionarily speaking, we have reason to begin with. There's no evolutionary explanation for it.

Assuming God gave you an accurate means to reason and understand him or his word, or what it means to be made in his image.

There's no point to believing in God if you don't believe what he says. He made his word for us, so it wouldn't make any sense to not be able to understand it.

I wasn't talking about that: i was demonstrating that a moral command from God (to believe in and worship him) does not exist in the human conscience.

You must mean we don't automatically believe in God before we know about him? But we don't automatically believe there is no god or evolution, so I don't see your point. However, all cultures, tribes, all over the world, be it pagan or not, have the tendency to worship something (idolize something--place it in upmost importance). Some replace God with science or themselves or nature, or material possessions, but we all have the tendency to worship. Our world appears designed. So a reasonable hermit who never communicated with others ever would probably believe in a god if he looked outside his window. He'd be even more amazed if he knew about the snowflake, and he wouldn't have a doubt after knowing about a cell.

You don't seem to understand evolution. The genes that encourage survival are passed on because the offspring survives. If the children didn't survive, there is no possible way for those genes to be passed on. What you propose is incoherent.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. Sexual reproduction only encourages survival of a race--not the individual. Why would a sexual reproduction system help an individual be more fit for survival?

Only is you assume the only meaning stems from God: which is circular.
Point is subjective. You believe the same, you just make the subject God: I don't. Feelings and ideas are equivalent to everything else: there's no higher power for them to pale under. You're examining everything from a theistic perspective: comparing to God.
Besides, it's easy to reformulate your argument: why is there a point to anything because God just happened to have the urge to create? We're as much based on urges under theism as we are atheism.

Meaning is not subjective. We all have the desire to be loved and to love. We all want to be of worth. We all want to have something to live for. How we achieve those things is subjective, because we can come to those fulfillments in different ways: children, a spouse, career, horses, friends). But my point is that there's no logical reason, in evolution, for love to be more special than soda, worth than chlorine, living than a glass of water.

God did not have the "urge to create." He made us out of love, and nothing could be more meaningful.

22

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 04, 2015, 02:55:12 PM »

Just put a quote around everything you want separate (use the quote button):

[Q][Q] A said [/Q] B said [/Q]

========
--------------
A said
--------------
B said
========

Thank you, Jadyyn. 

23

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 04, 2015, 12:10:25 AM »

Evolution is not working with genes already present, it's adding new DNA, new information. From scratch.

From what's already there. Small changes. Take asexual reproduction: that's adding whole new DNA, not different (muttaion takes care of that), but it is creating new DNA. We know that occurs. Look at the end result, you see the big change you're focused on: but the small changes leading up to that are simple and understood.

But I don't have a problem with small changes, so long as it's clear that I don't believe they can lead to a transformation of one kind to another kind. There is no good evidence of this and there should be. If it were true.

There's no reason to think life from nothing is impossible?

That doesn't even try to show it's impossible. The best you can say it's unlikely, but the Earth is not all that exists. There's all of time and all of space for the conditions to be met, and there are many things that could develop. The flaw with that article is that it supposes fully functional cells and DNA sprouted out of nowhere, which no one thinks happened. [/quote]

Many attempts have been made to calculate the probability of the formation of life from chemicals, but all of them involve making simplifying assumptions that make the origin of life even possible (i.e. probability > 0).

Mathematician Sir Fred Hoyle stated in various ways the extreme improbability of life forming, or even getting a single functional biopolymer such as a protein. Hoyle said, “Now imagine 1050 blind persons [ed: standing shoulder to shoulder, they would more than fill our entire planetary system] each with a scrambled Rubik cube and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. Life must plainly be a cosmic phenomenon.”

Indeed, we can calculate the probability of getting just one small protein of 150 amino acids in length, assuming that only the correct amino acids are present, and assuming that they will join together in the right manner (polymerize). The number of possible arrangements of 150 amino acids, given 20 different ones, is (20)150. Or the probability of getting it right with one try is about 1 in 10195. Lest someone protest that not every amino acid has to be in the exact order, this is only a small protein, and only one of several hundred proteins needed, many of which are much larger, and the DNA sequence has to arise as well, seriously compounding the problem. Indeed there are proteins that will not function at all with even a small alteration to their sequence.

At that time Hoyle argued that life must therefore have come from outer space. Later he realized that even given the universe as a laboratory, life would not form anywhere by the unguided (non-intelligent) processes of physics and chemistry:

“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 naughts after it … It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”

Does a figure of 1 in 1040,000 make the origin of life somewhere in the universe impossible without purposeful intelligence? Can we say that?

The total number of events (or ‘elementary logical operations’) that could have occurred in the universe since the supposed big bang (13.7 billion years) has been calculated at no more than 10120 by MIT researcher Seth Lloyd.40 This sets an upper limit on the number of experiments that are theoretically possible. This limit means that an event with a probability of 1 in 1040,000 would never happen. Not even our one small protein of 150 amino acids would form.

However, biophysicist Harold Morowitz41 came up with a much lower probability of 1 in 1010,000,000,000. This was the chance of a minimalist bacterium being assembled from a broth of all the basic building blocks (e.g. theoretically obtained by heating a brew of living bacteria to kill them and break them down to their basic constituents).

As an atheist, Morowitz argued that therefore life was not a result of chance and posited that there must be some property of available energy that drives the formation of entities that can use it (aka ‘life’). This sounds much like the idea of Gaia, which attributes pantheistic mystical properties to the universe.

More recently the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel proposed something similar to account for the origin of life and mind.

Anything but believe in a supernatural Creator, it would appear.

The different probabilities calculated arise from the difficulty of calculating such probabilities and the differing assumptions that are made. If we make calculations using assumptions that are most favorable to abiogenesis and the result is still ridiculously improbable, then it is a more powerful argument than using more realistic assumptions that result in an even more improbable result for the materialist (because the materialist can try to argue against some of the assumptions with the latter approach).

However, all calculations of the probability of the chemical origin of life make unrealistic assumptions in favor of it happening, otherwise the probability would be zero. For example, Morowitz’s broth of all the ingredients of a living cell cannot exist because the chemical components will react with each other in ways that will render them unavailable for forming the complex polymers of a living cell, as explained above.

The origin of life is about as good as it gets in terms of scientific ‘proof’ for the existence of God.
High profile information theorist Hubert Yockey (UC Berkeley) realized this problem:

“The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual motion machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers … [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance.”

Note that in his calculations, Yockey generously granted that the raw materials were available in a primeval soup. But in the previous chapter of his book, Yockey showed that a primeval soup could never have existed, so belief in it is an act of ‘faith’. He later concluded, “the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception based on the ideology of its champions.”

there is no reason to think they are turning into something else or were something else.

Only if you presuppose evolution doesn't exist, in which case your line of arguing against evolution is meaningless. Everything that exists has a use, because otherwise it wouldn't exist: that's a simplification of evolution. Claiming that we don't observe transition and therefore that's not evidence for evolution, however, is wholly circular. [/quote]

But you're forgetting that you're coming at it from the angle that evolution does exist, which is also a presupposition. Can you explain to me how it's circular reasoning to say that if we can't observe something in science, it doesn't exist? I'm fairly certain science is observing, pretty much by definition.

I'm not only talking about morality in my axiom, but I'll address that too. The reason why atheism is not a better axiom, in my opinion, is because it fails to explain the way the world works in a consistent manner. You are right to say that if evolution is true, there is no objective morality. Naturalism cannot provide ethics, it is simply not capable of providing meaning.

Because evolution doesn't provide an axiom: it provides our ability to reason and arrive at the axiom, and to have a conscience. [/quote]

Evolution does not have an explanation for reason or conscience, but you must assume that it provides you with the ability to reason if you refuse to believe in God.

The atheist cannot put forward, within his own framework, a justification for why reasoning is trustworthy, or even worthwhile. There's no explanation for why a debate is more important than the two soda bottles fizzing.

Reasoning is trustworthy by axiom too: that's necessarily the case. You can't exactly prove, beyond assuming it, that God gave us reliable faculties of reasoning: any attempt to do so would be based in assuming you can reason. [/quote]

If you believe in God, then you believe him when he says he made us in his image. That means that he gave us the ability to reason because he does. To give us free will, we must also have the ability to reason and to choose to be in relationship with him or to reject him.

I don't know where you got the idea that humans don't have the tendency to believe in God.

Capital-G God. Beyond issues with the study, there is no tendency to believe in the morally mandated God. [/quote]

I thought you meant there was no tendency to believe in a supernatural being. Because that would be the opposite of atheism. But if you believe in a god of any sort, you must believe he or she is there for a reason, whether it's to hold you accountable for your actions (which is usually the case) or because it's the power that began life.

If we evolved to do no harm and that is the evolutionary moral code, it seems that we would be programmed to do a little better. Rather, it seems that we wouldn't be able to help but be morally perfect. Of course it makes sense to care for our young, but it doesn't make sense that we would do so without knowing why we're doing it. It doesn't make sense that we would evolve urges that contradict other evolved urges. And it's also too convenient.

We breathe without knowing why we're doing it, at first: and early humans did for centuries. Why do you have to know a reason, to do something? [/quote]

Because our urges and chemicals should only be for surviving. But to have offspring is too intelligent of a need for an accidental urge to stick around, because it doesn't have to. Other tendencies like breathing are critical to survival (and still absurd to have began on its own) but passing off genes is just a benefit--a bonus.


If we were divinely created, we should do a little better, and our urges should be more in line. Evolution isn't an intelligent process, flaws will seep in: that's how it works. [/quote]

But the difference is that God made us with free will in a world where we can choose good or evil. But evolution seems to have given birth to robots who are programmed from pond scum to do good because we're selfish and want to survive, for some reason. Or rather, for no reason.

If you are a product of chemicals and nothing more, everything in your mind is an illusion. Every idea, including evolution, stems from some kind of urge or chemical. Really nothing can be trusted to be real. Sad, huh?

I still fail to understand what your definition of illusion is. If you think something is an illusion simply because God didn't make it, sure, but that's meaningless.
[/quote]

What I'm saying is that your feelings and ideas, if based on chemicals and urges only, are completely without logic. There's no point to them. And really no point to anything.

By the way, I thought I figured out how to do your quote then mine, for easier reading, but the preview doesn't show it how it's supposed to be. I'm hoping it's clear enough. Also doing this all on my phone, so it's taking even longer. But maybe that's why the code isn't working? I don't know.

24

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 03, 2015, 12:53:21 AM »

The problem is, again, that these changes that are mutations are losing information for the most part. Even in billions of years, it's pretty impossible that mutations would be able to make enough small changes to gain the sort of information required to build an animal that never existed before. The quick changes that we see in speciation or survival of the fittest are operating under a different system. Speciation is working with genes that were already present in that kind of animal.

You have already been told that the information loss argument is inconsistent. Evolution works with genes that are already present, it just alters them slightly.

I wasn't going to actually get into the origin of life, but it is fundamental to both evolution and creation. If life cannot come from non-life, then evolution is a pointless argument anyway.

Sure, but that still isn't something the theory of evolution attempts to explain. Besides, there's no reason to think it's impossible.

I don't believe flying squirrels have anything transitional.

Proto-wings, for one. Every animal has 'something transitional,' to think otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand evolution.

The important thing in believing an axiom is whether or not it's consistent with the real world. So I don't agree that the Christian view of morality is no better than any other axiom, because I believe it's the only one that makes sense with the way things are.

Axioms of morality have no way to be consistent with the real world: unless you assume the conscience relates to an objective system of morality (only true presupposing God), and even then a non-theistic axiom is better. Every inherent moral belief is based on doing no harm, while there is clearly no tendency to believe in God (observable by comparing rates of disbelief with other moral sins) which is a theistic moral statement.

We all have the instinct to survive, e.g. not give all our food away. But if we saw a starving child, the best of us would give all our food away to that child and starve in her place. It's only selfishness if you're preferring yourself over someone else. This would be consistent with evolution. To develop an accidental trait for selflessness is a far-reaching notion. Where would the reasoning behind a selfless act come from? To develop a random urge to care for your young without reason is equally absurd. But if you're basing the urge to care for our young merely on a glitch, urge, or chemical reaction, then we are really talking about love and free will and every other virtue as merely an illusion, in which we can't help ourselves. We are merely robots, enslaved to our urges.

Don't forget, not every act is a direct implication of evolution. Often, many things can be side-effects of an otherwise good trait. Take moths: they fly too close to a flame because they're used to navigating by stars. Either a sadistic God made them, or they have an impulse that hasn't yet adapted to a relatively recent or minor invention. Human empathy is clearly beneficial, especially for children. We want to protect children, who normally can't protect themselves: and so further allow our species to develop.
There's every reason to care for our children, in an evolutionary perspective. Beyond that, how do you define evolution? I've never liked the notion that just because something's in our mind, it must be less real: ultimately, we experience everything through our minds. If something's an illusion just because it arises from our minds, then everything's an illusion: it's incoherent to single out love and virtue.

As for which instinct is stronger, self-sacrifice or self-preservation, I couldn't say objectively speaking. People aren't clones of one another; everyone's different, especially on these issues where people think and internalize new ideas and thoughts. Compare a self-harmer with low self-esteem to Donald Trump, you'd get two completely different results.

“Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.”

Darwinian explanations can be tested by observing the root, rather than the effect. That's how science works.

Evolution is not working with genes already present, it's adding new DNA, new information. From scratch.

There's no reason to think life from nothing is impossible? This article does an okay job of explaining that problem. http://creation.mobi/cheating-with-chance  There are others I've read that really baffle the brain, and I've been wholly convinced that life by chance is absolutely impossible.

Let me rephrase this. There is no evidence that squirrels or any animal has anything transitional. As is proven in my eye topic, there are many different types and uses of various animal parts, but there is no reason to think they are turning into something else or were something else. A squirrel's "wing" is fully functional. But more importantly, it's still a squirrel. Natural selection can change a species, but not a kind.

I'm not only talking about morality in my axiom, but I'll address that too. The reason why atheism is not a better axiom, in my opinion, is because it fails to explain the way the world works in a consistent manner. You are right to say that if evolution is true, there is no objective morality. Naturalism cannot provide ethics, it is simply not capable of providing meaning. In the atheist's worldview, thoughts and reasoning are just the results of chemical reactions in the brain. A debate and a couple of soda bottles fizzing are just different types of chemical reactions. The atheist cannot put forward, within his own framework, a justification for why reasoning is trustworthy, or even worthwhile. There's no explanation for why a debate is more important than the two soda bottles fizzing.

I don't know where you got the idea that humans don't have the tendency to believe in God. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm It's just simply not true.

If we evolved to do no harm and that is the evolutionary moral code, it seems that we would be programmed to do a little better. Rather, it seems that we wouldn't be able to help but be morally perfect. Of course it makes sense to care for our young, but it doesn't make sense that we would do so without knowing why we're doing it. It doesn't make sense that we would evolve urges that contradict other evolved urges. And it's also too convenient.

Just because you don't like a notion doesn't make it any less true. If you are a product of chemicals and nothing more, everything in your mind is an illusion. Every idea, including evolution, stems from some kind of urge or chemical. Really nothing can be trusted to be real. Sad, huh?

I'm not really sure what you meant in your last line.

25

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 02, 2015, 09:17:25 PM »

I would like to say that you made the discussion personal by questioning a well researched scientific theory without any argument beyond you don't believing it possible. I pointed out the limits of such an argument ...

Science is complicated and the sum of our knowledge has far outgrown the understanding of any single person ... therefore calling evolution "magical and fairytale-like to me" is not a very constructive way of moving an argument along.

I thereby stand by my initial observation of "Argument from incredulity" which I colorful described as "a lack of imagination and understanding on your side". Considering the usual standard of discussion on this forum I can't really see it as a bad personal attack and I will freely admit that there are many issues where my own "imagination and understanding" isn't enough to fully grasp them ... of course, in such cases I generally try to stay out of arguing for or against them.

If you take it personally when someone doesn't agree with your faith, you must have some emotional aversion to other belief systems (or perhaps mine, specifically, which is more likely the case). If you get offended this easily, it will be difficult for you to converse constructively with anyone, and it's impossible to keep an open mind, which is evident.

If you wish to "be constructive" in "moving this argument along," you have my permission. I haven't seen it yet.

I do have an imagination, and so does Darwin, Hans Christian Anderson, Mark Twain, and J.R.R. Tolkein. Indeed, evolution is a figment of your imagination. Don't be too upset, you really walked right into that joke on the last post. 

26

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 02, 2015, 12:40:59 AM »

Funny enough "Argument from incredulity" has been mentioned several times on this forum lately ... and your post is just that ... "I can't imagine that" just shows a lack of imagination and understanding on your side and not a general problem with the theory.

In fact, Evolution is a very detailed, logical and well researched science and the "just so" approach seems on the side of those that explain the diversity of the world by an external magic influence when it actually follows a perfect inner logic.

Oh no, my friend, I don't lack an imagination. Do care to expand, if you wish to enlighten my understanding. I believe discussing our beliefs, the why's, and the potential how's, are useful and beneficial in a world where we are quick to judge and throw insults without trying to respect and see another's viewpoint. You are free to not participate in our discussion, but personal attacks and a lack of information/resources to help your point are really not beneficial.

I've explained to you that evolution, while it may be detailed, is certainly more magical and fairytale-like to me. You are obviously allowed to think otherwise, as long as your chemicals and urges will allow it, that is.

27

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 01, 2015, 07:33:37 PM »

As a species I would say we still have that instinct, but as humans developed intellect and individualism we have also learned to overcome our instincts ... thats sometimes good and sometimes bad ... evolution has basically no morals ... and I would argue that the morals we developed have roots in individual or social advantages too ... and are not god-given but men-evolved.

No, I get the concept. I understand that if an animal were to accidentally get the urge to protect her young that the specific species would survive because they had offspring as a result. I think Jadyyn had a really good question about which instinct is stronger. But I'm not satisfied, because I don't believe the urge to have offspring would happen with out a Reason--a Being to plan this out. It's too "just so," among many other evolutionary stories, really including the need to survive in the first place, come to think of it. Even the fact that trees produce seeds, without the need to nurture, just the fact that they produce seeds at all is pointing to a designer. I can't buy the idea that these things "just happened" from nothing and for no reason. If you look at this stuff from an outsider's viewpoint, you must surely see the reasoning behind what I'm saying.

28

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: November 01, 2015, 01:32:47 AM »

The DNA changes in adaptive immunity occur only in a controlled manner among only a limited number of genes in a limited subset of cells that are only part of the immune system, and these changes are not heritable. Thus, the argument for evolution falls flat on its face.

Outright nonsense. The fact the system works even in just one generation gives it an evolutionary advantage: and as the ability to possess an immune system is passed on... To say nothing of the inexplicable conclusion that it's intelligent design as a presupposition. It's easy to see how the beneficial system would come about naturally: some basic antibody system, a body able to guess, to what we observe.

We are not talking about small functional changes, but radical ones.

And here's the problem: we are talking about small changes. Evolution can only cause small changes. It just so happens that, as in every single situation, when a lot of small changes are made, these will add up to a big one.

The most basic processes upon which all life depends cannot be co-opted from pre-existing systems.

Just an argument from irreducible complexity, which is outdated in so many ways: it assumes only one possible path, instead of, for example, the idea that a 'scaffold' existed, or that multiple parts were once used for a different purpose. We've observed both those things, to my knowledge. take a keystone arch: if one stone is removed, the whole thing collapses: but this doesn't mean it's impossible for one to be built. And take a mousetrap; take one part away and it's useless, but each part is still handy for different purposes.

Yes, mutations can occur within living species (kinds), but, no, those mutations cannot be used to explain how those species (kinds) came into existence in the first place. We are talking about two completely separate processes.

Given evolution isn't meant to explain the origin of life, I fail to see how this counts for anything against the theory. The Bible doesn't explain Pythagoras' theorem, does that damage your faith?

Regarding your question on God's character, since we lose information: Disease and loss of information and decay are all products of what we term "the fall"--the first time man sinned. God didn't create the world as we see it today. But I've already touched on that in previous posts.

Did God not know how we would develop should early man fall?

Therefore Christians should not be faulted for having axioms.

I am not faulting you, as I've said: simply pointing out this means the Christian form of morality is no better than any other axiom-based system.

Regarding lungs, wings, and such: If lungs and hearts and wings were to evolve slowly (different topic, I get sidetracked), we would see these transitional organs in animals all over the fossil record. But what we see is fully developed lungs, hearts, and fully developed animals.

It is physically impossible to observe an organ in a fossil. If you want transitional examples, flying squirrels have proto-wings, and there are a lot of animals (especially in the sea) with primitively developed eyes. See: animals that see only in black and white, or who have a pinhole camera type system, or who only react to light...

But my conscience tells me that selfishness is wrong. Doesn't yours?

It tells me selfishness in excess is wrong, the same as anything. Without some self-interest we'd all have died long ago, desperately trying to share food, only to have the other person give it back, before we insisted they have it, and they gave it back... Without some selfishness, some desire to do what you want, you'd have starved or died one of a million ways.
This doesn't preclude selflessness, it's all a matter of degree: the same as anything.

A father penguin will practically starve himself while he sits on his chicks in sub-zero temperatures and ice storms. Why in the heck would he know that this helps to pass on his genes?

In those terms, he probably doesn't. So? He doesn't need to know something to have the genetic urge; it's well-documented humans have an inherent closeness to relatives, whether children or parents. Such principles exist, and clearly an animal that has an arge to protect its young will have its genes passed on. That's all evolution is: the genes which favor genes being passed on will, well, be passed on.

The natural instinct is to survive for MY benefit, not to pass on my genes.

Then the genes that cause you to have that instinct wouldn't be passed on. You'd definitely die, but why does that mean everyone would? Plus that still supposes evolution lasted a while, to get beyong single-celled organisms to organisms capable of thought, and at that point there's a pretty strong basis for alternative systems to develop.
There is certainly an instinct for self-preservation: if this didn't exist we wouldn't live long enough to pass on our genes. Don't forget though, self-preservation (even if that was all at play) is hardly damaged by society: if anything, it's stronger. It's far easier to survive if you have help; not true for every creature, but for social animals like humans...

We have no evidence of the immune system evolving. For instance, the immune system appears abruptly in cartilaginous fish, and even 'primitive' jawed vertebrates have an immune system that is very similar to 'advanced mammals'. Before sharks, not a trace of antibodies or other pivotal immune proteins; after them, all elements are in place.

"when a lot of small changes are made, these will add up to a big one." The problem is, again, that these changes that are mutations are losing information for the most part. Even in billions of years, it's pretty impossible that mutations would be able to make enough small changes to gain the sort of information required to build an animal that never existed before. The quick changes that we see in speciation or survival of the fittest are operating under a different system. Speciation is working with genes that were already present in that kind of animal.

I think you're over-simplifying the human body, cell, genome, DNA, etc. by comparing it to an arch or a mousetrap (interesting example, btw, I don't see how that works, but that's okay). This is an article that posts both evolutionist's responses like yours, and the viewpoint from the other side, of course. http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-2-chapter-10-argument-irreducible-complexity If you're not getting too tired of reading articles.

I wasn't going to actually get into the origin of life, but it is fundamental to both evolution and creation. If life cannot come from non-life, then evolution is a pointless argument anyway.

Yes, God knew we would fail, thus giving us certain traits that came out when our environment got harsher. But he deemed it all worth it, and turned it into good. I could go on and on in this subject, but that's the nutshell.

The important thing in believing an axiom is whether or not it's consistent with the real world. So I don't agree that the Christian view of morality is no better than any other axiom, because I believe it's the only one that makes sense with the way things are.

I don't believe flying squirrels have anything transitional. But regarding eyes:

"Ironically, the greatest variety of eye design, not only in structure, but also in number and location, exists not among the vertebrates as Darwinism would expect, but among the so-called ‘primitive’ invertebrates." --Fernald, R.D., Eyes: variety, development and evolution, Brain, Behavior and Evolution

Invertebrates also have eyes that are, in some respects, superior to those of vertebrates. One example is the hemispherical eyes of most flies and other insects, which produce, unlike human and most vertebrate eyes, an image largely free of spherical distortion. Human eyes have significant peripheral image distortion, but spherical eyes form a sharp image in all directions. However, humans do not have sharp peripheral vision because this is the function of the central retina called the macula. Our peripheral vision is for the detection of light and movement which trigger the fixation reflex to turn the eyes toward the stimulus.

The presumably highest, most evolved form of life, the higher primates, have only two cone photoreceptors, blue and green, but birds have a total of six pigments: four cone pigments plus pinopsin (a pineal photoreceptive molecule) and rhodopsin for black and white vision. Put another way, chickens, humans and mice all have the rhodopsin pigment; mice in addition have blue and green; humans have blue, green, and red; and birds have these three pigments plus violet and pinopsin. For every color that humans perceive, birds can see very distinct multiple colors, including ultraviolet light. Birds use infrared light (which we sense as heat) for night vision, allowing them to rapidly visualize their young in a dense, dark tree.

We all have the instinct to survive, e.g. not give all our food away. But if we saw a starving child, the best of us would give all our food away to that child and starve in her place. It's only selfishness if you're preferring yourself over someone else. This would be consistent with evolution. To develop an accidental trait for selflessness is a far-reaching notion. Where would the reasoning behind a selfless act come from? To develop a random urge to care for your young without reason is equally absurd. But if you're basing the urge to care for our young merely on a glitch, urge, or chemical reaction, then we are really talking about love and free will and every other virtue as merely an illusion, in which we can't help ourselves. We are merely robots, enslaved to our urges.

Philip Skell, who was Professor of Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, commented:

“Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.”

29

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: October 30, 2015, 10:28:35 PM »

Evolutionists teach that one-celled organisms have given rise to all the different kinds we have today. In each case, the DNA ‘recipe’ has had to undergo a massive net increase of information during the alleged millions of years. A one-celled organism does not have the instructions for how to manufacture eyes, ears, blood, skin, hooves, brains, etc. So for protozoa to have given rise to ponies, for example, there would have to be some mechanism that gives rise to new information.

The reality is that selection on its own always gets rid of information, never the opposite. To have a way to add information, the ‘only game in town’ for evolution’s true believers is genetic copying mistakes or accidents, i.e. random mutations (which can then be ‘filtered’ by selection). However, the problem is that if mutations were capable of adding the information required, we should see hundreds of examples all around us, considering that there are many thousands of mutations happening continually. But whenever we study mutations, they invariably turn out to have lost or degraded the information. This is so even in those rare instances when the mutational defect gives a survival advantage, e.g. the loss of wings on beetles on windy islands.

We do observe them: they're simply small scale. However, there are many cases of information being added to the genome by mutation.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13673-evolution-myths-mutations-can-only-destroy-information/
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

if we were divinely created, what kind of Creator do you imagine that would make it so we're inevitably losing information as the centuries go by? That seems doomed to failure.

Remember, evolutionary belief teaches that once upon a time, there were living things, but no lungs—lungs had not evolved yet, so there was no DNA information coding for lung manufacture. Somehow this program had to be written. New information had to arise that did not previously exist, anywhere.

They didn't evolve all at once. Small changes happened, maybe even for a completely different purpose: these added up, until a long, or feathers, were introduced.

Regarding the nature of God, we have good because he is good. He is the standard. I’m not sure what the problem is there.

No problem, if you admit you're simply defining this as an axiom: a fundamental statement that can't be proven. And if you're doing this, it can be compared to other axioms.

So you agree that the good in evolution is not right vs wrong but what enables us to survive, aka what’s best for myself. How did this “good” rise about then? How was it beneficial for the first being to put himself last and put someone else first? For example, what caused the first mother of something to nurture her young (and put her own needs behind)?

For the first being, it wasn't: not all animals act this way, though some observably do. Social creatures, however, rely on the influence of a society: and so a system of mutual trust and care would necessarily develop. Self-sacrifice might be part of this, or a side-effect of this caring: as for the first mother, it's clearly beneficial to protect your young. If you didn't, tehy'd be more likely to die, and those genes wouldn't be passed on: whereas the genes of the caring mother would far more likely survive.

Conscience begs the question,  since there are murderers who seemingly don’t have a conscience. It depends on how depraved someone is to how far they are capable of committing acts that are evil. So whether you work on the weekend or are a serial killer depends on how numb you are to the consequences, or block out the conscience that I believe God gave us.

I'd say it's far more likely someone could blot out a conscience naturally evolved that one divinely mandated.
Even so, the typical trait of a predisposed killer (omitting crimes of passion) would be selfishness: focus on their own wants and needs rather than caring for others. A certain amount of 'selfishness' is a good thing, it's what means we eat rather than give all our food away, but evolution isn't perfect: of course certain drives can be misrepresented or badly followed. However, we can tell from an overall picture why what someone does is wrong.

Okay, one more try. This article http://creation.com/chimp-y-chromosome seems much easier to follow.

Has little to do with the key similarity, still only focuses on the great apes, admits there's error involved and yet treats the study as perfect... And all from a perspective that evolution is apparently some massive conspiracy.

Sorry for my late answer, busy day.

First, information. An article you gave me says "Rather than going into what defines 'information'..." but that's exactly the problem. I decided to pull some key elements from an article. You can view the entire article here: http://creation.com/mutations-new-information

Adaptive immunity
I have a hard time calling something like adaptive immunity, which involves changes in the order of a certain set of genes to create novel antibodies, ‘mutation’. Adaptive immunity is often brought up by the evolutionist as an example of ‘new’ genes (traits) being produced by mutation. Here we have an example of a mechanism that takes DNA modules and scrambles those modules in complex ways in order to generate antibodies for antigens to which the organism has never been exposed. This is a quintessential example of intelligent design. The DNA changes in adaptive immunity occur only in a controlled manner among only a limited number of genes in a limited subset of cells that are only part of the immune system, and these changes are not heritable. Thus, the argument for evolution falls flat on its face.

Gene duplication
Gene duplication is often cited as a mechanism for evolutionary progress and as a means of generating ‘new’ information. Here, a gene is duplicated (through several possible means), turned off via mutation, mutated over time, turned on again through a different mutation, and, voilà!, a new function has arisen.
Invariably, the people who use this as an argument never tell us the rate of duplication necessary, nor how many duplicated but silenced genes we would expect to see in a given genome, nor the needed rate of turning on and off, nor the likelihood of a new function arising in the silenced gene, nor how this new function will be integrated into the already complex genome of the organism, nor the rate at which the silenced ‘junk’ DNA would be expected to be lost at random (genetic drift) or through natural selection. These numbers are not friendly to evolutionary theory, and mathematical studies that have attempted to study the issue have run into a wall of improbability, even when attempting to model simple changes. This is akin to the mathematical difficulties Michael Behe discusses in his book, The Edge of Evolution.34In fact, gene deletions35 and loss-of-function mutations for useful genes are surprisingly common.36 Why would anyone expect a deactivated gene to stick around for a million years or more while an unlikely new function develops?

But the situation with gene duplication is even more complicated than this. The effect of a gene often depends on gene copy number. If an organism appears with extra copies of a certain gene, it may not be able to control the expression of that gene and an imbalance will occur in its physiology, decreasing its fitness (e.g. trisomy causes abnormalities such as Down syndrome because of such gene dosage effects). Since copy number is a type of information, and since copy number variations are known to occur (even among people37), this is an example of a mutation that changes information. Notice I did not say ‘adds’ information, but ‘changes’. Word duplication is usually frowned upon as being unnecessary (ask any English teacher). Likewise, gene duplication is usually, though not always, bad. In the cases where it can occur without damaging the organism, one needs to ask if this is really an addition of information. Even better than that, is this the type of addition required by evolution? No, it is not.

Several creationists have written on this subject, including Lightner,38 Liu and Moran.39 Even if an example of a new function arising through gene duplication is discovered, the function of the new must necessarily be related to the function of the old, such as a new but similar catalysis end product of an enzyme. There is no reason to expect otherwise. New functions arising through duplication are not impossible, but they are vanishingly unlikely, and they become more unlikely with each degree of change required for the development of each new function.

The real issue
The development of new functions is the only thing important for evolution. We are not talking about small functional changes, but radical ones. Some organism had to learn how to convert sugars to energy. Another had to learn how to take sunlight and turn it into sugars. Another had to learn how to take light and turn it into an interpretable image in the brain. These are not simple things, but amazing processes that involve multiple steps, and functions that involve circular and/or ultra-complex pathways will be selected away before they have a chance to develop into a working system. For example, DNA with no function is ripe for deletion, and making proteins/enzymes that have no use until a complete pathway or nano-machine is available is a waste of precious cellular resources. Chicken-and-egg problems abound. What came first, the molecular machine called ATP synthase or the protein and RNA manufacturing machines that rely on ATP to produce the ATP synthase machine? The most basic processes upon which all life depends cannot be co-opted from pre-existing systems. For evolution to work, they have to come up from scratch, they have to be carefully balanced and regulated with respect to other processes, and they have to work before they will be kept.
Saying a gene can be copied and then used to prototype a new function is not what evolution requires, for this cannot account for radically new functionality. Thus, gene duplication cannot answer the most fundamental questions about evolutionary history. Likewise, none of the common modes of mutation (random letter changes, inversions, deletions, etc.) have the ability to do what evolution requires. Darwin pulled a bait and switch in his On the Origin of Species. He actually produced two separate theories: what I call his special and general theories of evolution, following Kerkut45. Darwin went on at length to show how species change. This was the Special Theory of Evolution and he was preceded by numerous others, including several creationists, with the same idea.
It took him a long time to get to the point, but he finally said,
“ … I can see no limit to the amount of change … which may be effected in the long course of time by nature’s power of selection.”46
This was his General Theory of Evolution, and this is where he failed, for he provided no real mechanism for the changes and was ignorant of the underlying mechanisms that would later be revealed. To use a modern analogy, this would be akin to saying that small, random changes in a complex computer program can create radical new software modules, without crashing the system.47 Thus, the ‘can mutations create new information’ argument is really about the bridge between the special and general modes of evolution. Yes, mutations can occur within living species (kinds), but, no, those mutations cannot be used to explain how those species (kinds) came into existence in the first place. We are talking about two completely separate processes.

Regarding your question on God's character, since we lose information: Disease and loss of information and decay are all products of what we term "the fall"--the first time man sinned. God didn't create the world as we see it today. But I've already touched on that in previous posts.

Regarding axioms, all philosophical systems start with axioms (presuppositions), or unprovable propositions accepted as true, and deduce theorems from them. Therefore Christians should not be faulted for having axioms. So the question for any axiomatic system is whether it is self-consistent and is consistent with the real world.

Regarding lungs, wings, and such: If lungs and hearts and wings were to evolve slowly (different topic, I get sidetracked), we would see these transitional organs in animals all over the fossil record. But what we see is fully developed lungs, hearts, and fully developed animals.

You say that evolutionary goodness rises from man's need to survive. This would mean that it all stems from selfish desires. But my conscience tells me that selfishness is wrong. Doesn't yours? Selfishness is the root of all evils: murder, lying, greed, etc. are all rooted in selfishness. Good, objective good, arises from just the opposite: selflessness. Selflessness is what causes us to be charitable, moms and dads, and heroes. It's what causes us to trust each other. A father penguin will practically starve himself while he sits on his chicks in sub-zero temperatures and ice storms. Why in the heck would he know that this helps to pass on his genes? If evolution were true, let me just tell you the obvious--we wouldn't be here. The natural instinct is to survive for MY benefit, not to pass on my genes. No lowly evolved being would have reason that he is aware of enough to sacrifice anything whatsoever. How would he or she even know they were passing on genes? They would've been like, "what is this thing leaching off of me?" And threw it away. Goodbye penguins, goodbye mammals. Goodbye, humans.

Creationists do not believe there's a conspiracy, but a lot of the information in the mass media is definitely biased, and the information in evolution is of course always interpreted from an evolutionary worldview and evolutionary presuppositions.

30

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Unsure of flat or not but here's something interesting

« on: October 29, 2015, 05:08:40 PM »

Small changes within kinds is not contrary to what creationists think. It's that an animal can transform into a different animal that we have a problem with. On a larger scale of small changes, there would be a large variety of species within the same kind of animal. For instance, dogs descended from wolves. But wolves, dingos, chihuahuas, and foxes are all part of the canine family.

That's true: but the fact is, it's incoherent to claim the small changes will magically stop just when they start to add up.

Evolutionarily speaking, what is "good" and why are we to do it? Why are we to "make life good"?

Strictly evolutionary speaking, because it's for the best for humanity. That's not a matter of good or evil, that's just how evolution works: it's the definition. Those that are able to survive and do what's best last. Humans, being social creatures, do just that,
As for 'what is good?' that's separate to evolution. Evolution explains what's called the conscience (and why it notably departs from God's commands), our ability to reason arrives at morality, and it's purely axiom based: as all morality necessarily is. Acknowledging Euthyphro's dilemma and resolution, your axiom is something along the lines of "God's nature is good." That's something that can't be proven, because you take it to be fundamentally true. You can't suppose a standard of good by which to measure it, you just state that his nature is good.

Yes, you can work on the Sabbath, the main point of that rule is to rest, refresh yourself, and to make time to connect with friends and family. Wanna guess what would happen if you never did that? Suffering is bad generally speaking, but sometimes it can also be good. Ultimately, if this answers your question, God's commands try to eliminate unnecessary suffering. But he knows better, so sometimes we learn that only after following him.

Sure, but none of that requires setting aside one day.
Even the cases when you mention suffering causing good, that good is typically reducing suffering: like a child who accidentally burns their hand, and learns to do better in future.
But regardless, that's not the point: we're comparing axioms. If I was to derive a system of morality from the axiom "Suffering is bad," and compare it to yours, derived from "God's nature/commands are good," how might we compare them? What is it that would set yours apart or above mine?

I know you said you already read this article, but I really don't think I posted it before. It's very technical, and there's too much to quote, but it deals with the chromosome issue in more detail.

I did check it out: and it should also be acknowledged the fundamental flaw in that kind of article. Good science is characterized by making it intelligible. If you find an article intended for public readership, that remains drowning in jargon, there's a very good chance either the writer doesn't understand what they're saying, or they're hiding something.

It tell them that monkeys are their fathers.

Evolution doesn't say that. If anything, we're distant, distant cousins: we share a common ancestor.
In fact, under creationism, we'd be far more closely related: more like brothers, half brothers at least. We share a father, after all.

(Hi Jimmy! Good to be on the same side for once, isn't it?)

Your argument about my magical line is like saying “if cats can breed with one another, why can’t they breed with dogs?” Creationists believe our variations have to do with information we *already have* vs new information, which is required for evolution.

The real issue in biological change is all about what happens at the DNA level, which concerns information. The information carried on the DNA, the molecule of heredity, is like a recipe, a set of instructions for the manufacture of certain items.

Evolutionists teach that one-celled organisms have given rise to all the different kinds we have today. In each case, the DNA ‘recipe’ has had to undergo a massive net increase of information during the alleged millions of years. A one-celled organism does not have the instructions for how to manufacture eyes, ears, blood, skin, hooves, brains, etc. So for protozoa to have given rise to ponies, for example, there would have to be some mechanism that gives rise to new information.

The reality is that selection on its own always gets rid of information, never the opposite. To have a way to add information, the ‘only game in town’ for evolution’s true believers is genetic copying mistakes or accidents, i.e. random mutations (which can then be ‘filtered’ by selection). However, the problem is that if mutations were capable of adding the information required, we should see hundreds of examples all around us, considering that there are many thousands of mutations happening continually. But whenever we study mutations, they invariably turn out to have lost or degraded the information. This is so even in those rare instances when the mutational defect gives a survival advantage, e.g. the loss of wings on beetles on windy islands.

As creatures diversify, gene pools become increasingly thinned out. The more organisms adapt to their surroundings by selection, i.e. the more specialized they become, the smaller the fraction they carry of the original storehouse of created information for their kind. Thus, there is less information available on which natural selection can act in the future to ‘readapt’ the population should circumstances change. Less flexible, less adaptable populations are obviously heading closer to extinction, not evolving.

Remember, evolutionary belief teaches that once upon a time, there were living things, but no lungs—lungs had not evolved yet, so there was no DNA information coding for lung manufacture. Somehow this program had to be written. New information had to arise that did not previously exist, anywhere.

Later, there were lungs, but no feathers anywhere in the world, thus no genetic information for feathers. Real-world observation has overwhelmingly shown mutation to be totally unable to feed the required new information into the system. In fact, mutations overall hasten the downward trend by adding genetic load in the form of harmful mutations, of which we have all accumulated hundreds over the generations of our ancestry.

What we see in the process of artificial selection or breeding giving rise to new varieties, is a thinning-out of the information in the parent stock, a reduction in the genetic potential for further variation. If you try and breed a Chihuahua from a Great Dane population or vice versa, you will find that your population lacks the necessary information. This is because, as each variety was selected out, the genes it carried were not representative of the entire gene pool.

What appeared to be a dramatic example of change with the appearance of apparently new traits thus turns out, when its genetic basis is understood, to be an overall downward movement in informational terms. The number of sentences carried by each subgroup is reduced thus making it less likely to survive future environmental changes. Extrapolating that sort of process forward in time does not lead to upwards evolution, but ultimately to extinction with the appearance of evermore-informationally-depleted populations.

In other words, populations can change and adapt because they have a lot of information (variety) in their DNA ‘recipe’. But unless mutations can feed in new information, each time there is variation/adaptation, the total information decreases (as selection gets rid of the unadapted portions of the population, some information is lost in that population). Thus, given a fixed amount of information, the more adaptation we see, the less the potential for future adaptation.

Regarding the nature of God, we have good because he is good. He is the standard. I’m not sure what the problem is there. So you agree that the good in evolution is not right vs wrong but what enables us to survive, aka what’s best for myself. How did this “good” rise about then? How was it beneficial for the first being to put himself last and put someone else first? For example, what caused the first mother of something to nurture her young (and put her own needs behind)?

Conscience begs the question,  since there are murderers who seemingly don’t have a conscience. It depends on how depraved someone is to how far they are capable of committing acts that are evil. So whether you work on the weekend or are a serial killer depends on how numb you are to the consequences, or block out the conscience that I believe God gave us.

"Even the cases when you mention suffering causing good, that good is typically reducing suffering: like a child who accidentally burns their hand, and learns to do better in future.” I don’t disagree with this—it was what I meant exactly.

Okay, one more try. This article http://creation.com/chimp-y-chromosome seems much easier to follow.