Cryptozoology forums > Debates > Evolution vs. Creationism > view thread

Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Fri, Nov 6 2009, 8:01pm  Why would 7 be the right number of neck bones for all mammals - whales don't move their necks, for crying out loud... It could be design, but that leads you nowhere, lets you make no predictions. So even if it's true - and of course, I believe in a creator God - it's no help. If a designer wants a snail with a straight gut, why coil and uncoil it? I conclude the coiled and straight ones have a common ancestor, and we have descent with modification, rather than suggest the Designer is dumb... Here's a page on urochordates. The adults mostly glue themselves to the ocean floor and filter-feed;on the lower left you see a pic of the free-swimming larval form, which suggests they are related to vertebrates. Their biochem and DNA is more similar to vertebrates than to other inverts - prediction fulfilled. You ask good questions and add to the discussion. What's not to like? Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Just Joan posted Fri, Nov 6 2009, 10:09pm  Why do predictions need to be made at all if life was designed? Similarities in biochemistry or DNA that are successful would be expected. For that which we suspect is faulty, insufficient, excessive or awkward perhaps the defining is too subjective and the value of the trait is not recognized by us, the observers, right? Coiling and uncoiling of snail guts might be advantageous in ways that we haven't discerned. Why do you decide gut changes imply ancestral relations instead of time specific digestive needs? Maybe the questions and suppositions are limiting the accuracy of the answers. I can't see a link, but I believe you are describing motility well. If a snail larva swims like a tadpole that might indicate some kind of a spinal cord. But sperms swim like tadpoles and they don't have spinal cords. I miss why you have fulfilled the prediction of similarity somewhere along the way. Please explain more. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Sat, Nov 7 2009, 8:21am  Why do predictions need to be made at all? Partly because it;s FUN! Also, So we can guess what's gonna happen. That can be very useful - survival of the fittest explains why we have drug-resistant superbugs, and supports the idea of using antibiotics sparingly and correctly. (Finish the prescription, don't use it for colds...) I'm not being very clear, partly because I'm mixing stuff I've learned over decades of looking at this. Torsion and de-torsion in snails happens before they eat anything. If a designer wants a snail to have a straight gut, the obvious way to do it is to avoid coiling it in the first place. Again, the idea of ancestral relations lets us make predictions about similarities in biochem and DNA that work... Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Just Joan posted Sat, Nov 7 2009, 9:59am  Learning is fun, but that doesn't mean it was accurate. I don't understand why you've chosen antibiotics/microbes for your example of survivors of the fittest when fossilized, anatomical and embryological evidences don't work as a tutorial example of these life forms. I am being as specific as I can because I haven't clogged my brains up with decades of these concepts. When snails are babies they're smaller than when they're adults, right? As babies they don't need to reproduce yet, and they haven't even eaten (?) before their guts uncoil. Maybe the reason the guts are coiled before they uncoil is because there is room for other organs to grow at a later age, like sex organs for when the snail is older after the guts uncoil. That would indicate patience and timeliness, neither of which is a quantifiable quality in a laboratory observation. People babies are born with big eyes in relation to the size of the rest of them. People babies are also less hairy than adults. Neither of these is a fossilization evidence. I'm pretty certain neither is an embryological evidence. Maybe there's anatomical evidence of eye growth cessation or hair growth commencement, but I don't know it. If there is a designer, there is a reason for why things are as they are. A designer on an omniscient scale can use any means or any reason at all. A scientist is only a human. Some are observers and some are changers. If they observe, perhaps they are trying to know the mind of God (whether or not they think that is their intention). If they change, perhaps they are the tools of God. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Hootowl posted Sun, Nov 8 2009, 9:41am  I think you have forced H to turn it up a notch, Joan! I will make a hopeful scientific prediction and state that someday H will realize that maybe the God he believes in did actually guide the development of life more than just setting the universe in motion and sitting back to see how it all turned out. On a more direct note to his and your debate, the argument that "evolution must be true, because the Designer wouldn't have done it that way" is a very weak position. Since we have no way of knowing the Designers intentions, or how far from the original design species and the environment have perhaps varied or degenerated from the original design, how can we say things should have been done differently? Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Just Joan posted Mon, Nov 9 2009, 10:46am  Hroth has an extraordinary mind! I delight in such a vast collection of remembered details as he has. Always I learn from him about something utterly unknown to me and being solution oriented I can connect dots that might not even have been recognized as dots by him because he is so loaded with details. We have fun conversations. His willingness to teach and share is wonderful. I agree very much with you on the weakness of "evolution must be true, because the Designer wouldn't have done it that way". It is untenable with the "little changes over time" of evolution theory. They aren't mutually exclusive sentences, but the one makes the other look a little limited by it's definition. That so much variety exists in successful forms clarifies the greatness of the Designer in spite of attempts to define His means of creation as fully comprehended by us within the Theory of Evolution. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Tue, Nov 10 2009, 2:46pm  You're kind to say so. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Hootowl posted Wed, Nov 11 2009, 6:50am  "That so much variety exists in successful forms clarifies the greatness of the Designer in spite of attempts to define His means of creation as fully comprehended by us within the Theory of Evolution." And that is the problem in a nutshell. As long as science refuses to accept the obvious truth that life is designed, it will continue to be nothing more than a collection of Just-So stories that misinterpret the evidence. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Tue, Nov 10 2009, 12:50pm  I don't see the two as incompatible, hoot. I know God moves in human history, but I wouldn't stop at contemplating the causes of WWI or WWII as 'God wanted it to happen. The Bible shows that God incorporates 'natural' processes into His plans. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Hootowl posted Wed, Nov 11 2009, 6:55am  "I don't see the two as incompatible, hoot." I realize that. I simply feel you have delegated God to the single role of First Cause, and ignore evidence showing that natural processes alone are incapable of achieving the diversity we see in life, both now and in the fossil record. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Wed, Nov 11 2009, 4:36pm  Are you really misunderstanding my point? Intentionally or not, you're misrepresenting my position. If someone dies, I agree that one explanation is that it's God's will - a least what they call permissive will. But that doesn't mean that here aren't proximate causes, some of which are natural. Stop trying to call me a deist who only believes in a watchwinder God. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Hootowl posted Wed, Nov 11 2009, 10:43pm  "Are you really misunderstanding my point?" Yes. Here is the problem. If you are NOT a deist who believes in a watchwinder God, in regards to biological life, what kind of God do you believe in? In all the time we have been debating, you have many times asked for evidence for ID. Yet it seems like you yourself believe in ID, at least at some point above the level of the creation of the first replicating life. If you do believe God did more than wind up the universe and let it run, at what general level of involvement do you see Him? Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Thu, Nov 12 2009, 12:49am  It might be as simple as God manipulating the odds of successful mutation. So common descent could happen, with God acting to make possible event you consider statistically unlikely to the point of impossibility. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: Hootowl posted Thu, Nov 12 2009, 4:19pm  It might be. But somehow I don't think God would use such an inefficient, even to imperfect humans, method of developing life. It's analogous to a computer programmer using bugs and glitches in existing code to write new software. I suspect God has a somewhat more efficient, and more direct, method of guiding life. You mention some miracles in your post below. One that comes to mind regarding the current issue is the account of the resurrection of Lazarus. Having been dead for parts of several days, in the warm climate of Judea his body had already begun to decompose. Yet in the blink of an eye he was whole and hearty again, with fully functioning cells and neural connections. Proof that God has the ability to create life in a little faster than 3.5 billion years. Subject: Re: The Value of Scientific Consensus From: hroth posted Thu, Nov 12 2009, 12:56am  In Exodus, God's level of influence in human history shows a wide variety of levels of involvement. God 'hardens Pharoah's heart' gets him to act on his urges. This would have looked 'natural' to most observers, but we're told that God intervened. Some of the plagues were 'normal', while killing of firstborn was so selective as to be obviously supernatural in origin. It looks to me very much as though God has used the 'natural' process of evolution to create the diversity of living things we see around us.

Close Window