Creationism Vs. Evolution Debate - Nye Vs Ham

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by jonesy

If people believe in an infinite God, I don't know why they have to say the world is only 6000 years old.
I think you can believe God created everything and have no concerns with the existance of dinosaurs and an earth that is millions of years old. Obviously the fossil record supports the existance of dinosaurs.
One thing that troubles me is that I have yet to see any conclusive fossil records that would support evolution. You would think they would abound. There seems to be lots of fossils of many species but not any of 'partial' species or ones that are in transition. That would be amazing.

? There are literally hundreds of thousands of examples.

I don't think you understand evolution. There is no "transition" or "partial species". Almost every fossil is a transition between two species. Virtually every dinosaur fossil is a chain in the evolution of some other species.

This was a very common counterpoint to evolution when I went to church amongst the people I talked to. That and the "Why are there still monkeys". Both are clearly brought from an ignorant view of evolution

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins

Disappointed none of the 22 said: “If the sun is a star, why doesn’t it come out at night like the other stars?”

[Kybosh]

If the fossil record isn't good enough to prove evolution, you should read up on genetics. Our genes (and indeed all earthy life), share genetic traits going back to when the earth was a soup of presumably RNA. Humans share genetic information with the earliest of invertebrates or even bacteria.

The question I ponder is known as the origin of chirality (google it, I'm too lazy to explain). It makes sense that atoms can form molecules, and molecules can form amino acids and amino acids can create RNA, and RNA can create DNA, and DNA can create proteins etc. (I'm over simplifying though). But how did initial life chemistry become chiral? The origin of chirality is very much at the fringes of philosophy and science right now.

[Regulator75]

[19Yzerman19]

Originally Posted by Jonesy

Again semantics, evolution surely has some ideas on what started the universe, typically referred to as the big bang i believe. I am just asking what banged and who caused it to bang. I have never heard a good response. I choose to call that 'force' God. You can leave it unnamed or unknown if you wish.

Seriously? Get at least slightly educated about the things you're arguing about. Theories about the origin of the universe have nothing whatsoever to do with theories about the evolution of species extant on Earth. Lumping them all together is sort of like critiquing Christian doctrine by quoting the Qu'ran.

Anyway, I tend to side with the people who said that Nye loses just by showing up. I know, I take the point that by not showing up you yield the floor time, but doing this simply suggests that the "intelligent design" flat-earther perspective is worthy of equal time. Also, because Douglas Adams already succinctly summarized the debate.

Originally Posted by HHGTTG

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.

The argument goes like this:

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by jonesy

If people believe in an infinite God, I don't know why they have to say the world is only 6000 years old.
I think you can believe God created everything and have no concerns with the existance of dinosaurs and an earth that is millions of years old. Obviously the fossil record supports the existance of dinosaurs.
One thing that troubles me is that I have yet to see any conclusive fossil records that would support evolution. You would think they would abound. There seems to be lots of fossils of many species but not any of 'partial' species or ones that are in transition. That would be amazing.

What is a partial species?

Are you sure that what you are looking for actually is predicted by evolution. Evolution occurs when a desired trait allows the group with that trait to either survive an extension event or breed at a greater rate. So where is the half speiecs.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by jonesy

If people believe in an infinite God, I don't know why they have to say the world is only 6000 years old.
I think you can believe God created everything and have no concerns with the existance of dinosaurs and an earth that is millions of years old. Obviously the fossil record supports the existance of dinosaurs.
One thing that troubles me is that I have yet to see any conclusive fossil records that would support evolution. You would think they would abound. There seems to be lots of fossils of many species but not any of 'partial' species or ones that are in transition. That would be amazing.

You are discussing the origin of the universe, which is different than the discussion of evolution of life on Earth.

No one has reached any proof of the origin of the universe (ie, what happened right before the big bang), but as photon said, scientests are OK with not knowing. They are ferviously trying to prove what happened, but the fact that they don't know (yet) is ok by them.

Creationists seem to be of the opinion that this is not OK and need an explaination for the beginnings of things, and thus, God is the answer. But the argument comes in from scientists that you can't just say what something is and hold that as truth. There has to be evidence of something. Creationists take it on faith that God created it, Scientists don't know what happened, but aren't going to claim they do until they do.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by jonesy

If people believe in an infinite God, I don't know why they have to say the world is only 6000 years old.
I think you can believe God created everything and have no concerns with the existance of dinosaurs and an earth that is millions of years old. Obviously the fossil record supports the existance of dinosaurs.
One thing that troubles me is that I have yet to see any conclusive fossil records that would support evolution. You would think they would abound. There seems to be lots of fossils of many species but not any of 'partial' species or ones that are in transition. That would be amazing.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

I wrote this FAQ as a reference for answering the "there aren't any transitional fossils" statement that pops up on talk.origins several times each year. I've tried to make it an accurate, though highly condensed, summary of known vertebrate fossil history in those lineages that led to familiar modern forms, with the known transitions and with the known major gaps both clearly mentioned.

[SeanCharles]

I'm not sure how this will be recieved but why can't both be right?

First off I'll clear up my history: I was raised a Catholic, went to church and did most of the sacraments and attended Catholic schools. In University I studied Earth Sciences and today I consider myself an agnostic.

I don't subscribe to any one religion anymore and know there is no way the earth is only thousands of years old, even 10's of thousands.

I believe in what Science has offered the world and accept most, if not all, of the concepts behind evolution and the like.

However, maybe it is just the little Catholic school boy still in me but, I still don't discredit the potential existence of God or a creator/higher being.

Just to be clear, I don't buy into what alot of extreme creationalists believe, or even much of the Bible, in a literal sense.

I realize one of the problem's with the world today is we have people who take the Bible as documented facts but what it really is is documents about our historical mindset and beliefs at certain times throught our history. There is value in religious writings if they are interpreted with the understanding it is the moral of the stories and writings that are important and not the legitimacy of it. We should be advanced enough in critical thought to know alot of what the Bible, and the like, declares can't be taken as fact. Science has proven this.

But my original point is I don't like how both sides claim to be right and true and the other side is false and untrue. They both have their value to society.

Sadly in todays world it seems religion is more of a detriment to us than of value. But that doesnt mean spirituality is a detriment.

Why couldn't a creator of some kind cause the big bang to occur and as a result put in motion the processes that resulted in what we see before us today?

The universe is a complex system that has soooo many aspects of which we still do not understand. Yes religion is flawed and should probably be revolutionalized but can one not believe in science and evolution as well as adhere to the possibility of a greater power?

How often is any one thing in the universe black or white? There is so much grey it is ridiculous to only consider two possibilities, is it not?

As Socrates once said "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

The knowledge we have now of the universe is miniscule compared the amount we do not know...

I adhere to the evolutionary model and look towards Science to learn more about my existence and what it entails.

But I still always consider the fact that at the end of the day there aren't too many things we can say, as a species, we have a full and complete understanding of.

Thats the end of my novel. Thanks for listening

[jonesy]

nm

[SeanCharles]

Originally Posted by jonesy

nm

I read your original post and was thinking about some things I wanted to say in return.

I can see why you would edit it all away though.

Thats one thing I wish was a bit better around here in that we should be aloud to ask questions, especially when discussing such a topic, without getting made fun of or called an idiot just because we don't know or are questioning its merit.

Discussing things in an unthreatening manner is how we expand our knowledge and develop new ideas...

[photon]

Originally Posted by jonesy

I think it is reasonable to use terms we are familiar with in these discussions. Saying 'Start', and 'time' may not be meaningful is too simple a way to try to discredit something. These are terms and framworks of a discussion that we can all understand.

Just because we can understand them doesn't mean they're terms that accurately describe reality. There was a time everyone understood what æther was

Originally Posted by jonesy

However, If in fact 'time' and 'start' have no meaning as you say then I would argue that gives more credance to the idea that God has no start and no end and always was, because he exists outside the constraint of 'time' He is looking from an 'outside perspective' as you say.

I'm saying they may have no meaning, if they do we have to define and understand it, we can't just use the words because we understand them and they fit what we already think.

And it doesn't give any credence to the idea of a God that's outside time, that's just giving God some attributes that are convenient and fit the necessary parameters. I can say the multiverse is outside time and has no start or end as well.

Originally Posted by jonesy

This really makes no sense and sounds like smug semantics to me.

It's not semantics. If I say "jonsey says he's seen my ugly carpet and he says he's never been to my house", that's not semantics, that's conflicting claims, both can't be accurate. You said "Evolutionists don't know what it was, and say it was from nothing.", if you say they are claiming they don't know, you can't then accuse them of saying what they know. Your two claims are mutually exclusive.

Originally Posted by jonesy

Again semantics, evolution surely has some ideas on what started the universe, typically referred to as the big bang i believe.

That's like saying gravity has some ideas on how oranges taste. Evolution explains how the diversity of life came about, it has nothing to do with the origin of the universe. Cosmology is the science of studying the universe.

Also the Big Bang describes the history of the universe, not how the universe started.

It's not semantics when misunderstanding how words are being used change meanings and limits clear communication.

Originally Posted by jonesy

I am just asking what banged and who caused it to bang. I have never heard a good response.

Well that's partially because it wasn't a bang at all, and because the cause is not known at this point.

Originally Posted by jonesy

I choose to call that 'force' God. You can leave it unnamed or unknown if you wish.

Sure you can call it God, as I said people used to call the force that cased lightning and caused the rivers to flood God as well. Taking an unknown and attributing it to God just because no other cause is yet known is a logical fallacy, an argument from ignorance.

Originally Posted by jonesy

I was not aware of too many religious evolutionists. I suppose the Catholic church is now that i think of it. I usually associate evolutionist as denying the existance of God. If you say that is not the case, I won't argue.

The majority of Christians accept evolution, associating evolution with atheism is a popular tactic among fundamentalist evangelicals (among others) to try and discredit evolution because they think it threatens their faith, when all it threatens is their particular interpretation of scripture.

Originally Posted by jonesy

I am sorry this does not make sense to me and appears to violate laws of physics, thermodynamics or science in general.

On the contrary, the laws of physics require that there is a constant froth of particles popping into existence out of nothing and then disappearing again as they cancel each other out. This doesn't violate any physics.

Originally Posted by jonesy

I believe this means you think that if the universe started x billion years ago, flourished for many billions of years with countless life forms, planets, solar systems, energy, chemical reactions etc, then died out and somehow and all dissappeared (going back to nothing) then it is ok to say it started from nothing.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but that's a hypothesis that's been tossed around and depending on the specifics physics at least doesn't prohibit such a thing. In an oversimplified way to put it, matter is the same as energy, and gravitational potential is negative energy, so if the universe if flat (and it certainly looks flat to the best we can detect so far) the negative and positive cancel out to zero if you added it all up.

But as I said, it's just all taking and speculating at this point, there's no rigorous scientific theory of how the universe got to be in the state it was in at the "start".

If Bill Nye and Ken Ham were debating the kind of god we're talking about here (a god that created the universe and that was it), then there really wouldn't be much of a debate at this point, because there's very little data with which to feed a debate. And the impact of such a god on society would be basically zero anyway.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Hey I didn't understand how time was relative. So I asked a question.

If you want to ask a question in a debate you have to do the following:

Clearly state you don't understand and are looking for understanding.

Follow that up with a statement saying you're not disagreeing, you just want more information.

If you don't do that, then people assume your question is an attack.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Nope, that's why the speed of light is C in gold ol' E=MC^2,
C=Constant

Time is realtive depending on your velocity and the effect of gravity in your vicinity, but no matter your frame of reference you'll always measure the speed of light as the same value.

The logical outcome of the (absurd) argument that time ran at a much faster rate is that light wouldn't *be* a constant, or, to be more precise, was one constant before 6000 years ago and a different one now.

So if, for example, you were measuring the distance to a particular galaxy and it came out to say that the galaxy was a billion light-years away, what this "theory" would say is that the galaxy is actually 6000 light-years away plus one second of light that comprises another 994 000 light-years of distance/time. To make it seem that we can see back 15 billion years to the "beginning of time", the light speed constant would have to had been around 50 quintillion times as big as it is now, so that an apparent distance of that many light-years would be 6000 light years + 14 999 999 994 more light-years that were compressed into an instant.

However, if this was the case, there would be vast differences between, for example, stars that began burning within that 6000 year light cone under the new lightspeed, and those outside it that began fusion under the original lightspeed.* So it didn't happen.

*Which would be impossible, undoubtedly - e=mc2 with the predicted "fast time" lightspeed would mean there would be 223 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 times (since the "c" variable is so much bigger) as much potential energy in every unit of mass, so that one god-created star the size of a teacup would have burned with far more energy than all the stars in our currently observable universe. This would have then blown all of that hypothetical star's atoms away at tremendous velocities, in the extremely unlikely event that they survived long enough to be so blown. So no stars and galaxies, just a big soup of shattered matter converted to pure energy, which I think would be quite noticeable.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Ace

You've got the right point, but it doesn't make all beliefs the same, it's ultimately the responsibility of each person of Faith to have the correct Faith (once again you can't prove this to someone through debate.)

But by what criteria does one decide one's belief is correct? If there's, in principle, no way to prove (or I'd use demonstrate, support with evidence as synonyms here) one belief as opposed to another one, then by definition they are all equally valid.

I don't know if it's helpful to maybe define some words? Belief to me usually means holding an idea to be true, and faith is holding something to be true without unambiguous evidence (or sometimes faith just refers to one's particular religious beliefs if that's the context).

Originally Posted by Ace

This is different from believing what you "want" to believe.

In what way? If I cannot support my beliefs in any way (i.e. can't be proven or disproved), then I cannot see any difference that ultimately doesn't boil down to wanting to believe. I may derive my religious beliefs from scripture, accepting it on faith, but if I can't prove that that scripture is divine while all others are not I'm choosing that particular one based on nothing except desire. If I derive my religious beliefs from what my parents taught me, but I can't prove my parents beliefs are divine while others are not, same thing.

It may not be a conscious desire, but deciding which religious belief to accept based purely on faith leaves it up to a feeling, a subconscious judgment based on subconscious criteria, which still boils down to desire.

Originally Posted by Ace

I might want to Believe that I have a God who just wants to give me a bunch of nice things, but this is far different than having Faith in God and following His principles. For instance Faith possibly means sacrifice and abolishing of personal wants and desires to live out as directed.

Live out as directed by whom? What directions are chosen to the exclusion of other conflicting directions, and why? Since one cannot prove one set of instructions are superior to another, all you can say here is you're choosing the set of instructions that best fits your existing views.

Originally Posted by Ace

This is where I think the debate gets lost, there are just too many people that claim Faith, but are really living out of a mentality of receiving. In my mind Faith is about giving and belief tends to be about getting, and I think a significant portion of the "Faith" group may not really be focused on the giving part. [not talking about money, more like giving yourself to your faith]

I see what you are saying, being selfless can be virtuous, and some people derive that from their religious belief, but that doesn't speak to why that particular religious belief is true. In fact it goes the other way, if a religious belief was true it could advocate murder and by definition murder would be virtuous. But instead we judge what our scriptures say and our derived beliefs change to fit our social beliefs rather than the other way around.

[Inglewood Jack]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

Yeah, I have no idea how the theory of relativity works.

I'm one of those people that reads things in the voice of the poster's avatar, so what you said here caused me to be super confused for a few moments.

[photon]

Originally Posted by SeanCharles

I believe in what Science has offered the world and accept most, if not all, of the concepts behind evolution and the like.

However, maybe it is just the little Catholic school boy still in me but, I still don't discredit the potential existence of God or a creator/higher being.

Just to be clear, I don't buy into what alot of extreme creationalists believe, or even much of the Bible, in a literal sense.

That's the thing, this debate wasn't about the existence of God, and I think it's only those extreme people that try to equate acceptance of evolution with atheism. They do it because accepting evolution, I think they feel, threatens their particular interpretation of scripture. And without their inerrant interpretation they feel they have nothing, so they fight.

Like Nye talked about, lots (probably most) Christians accept evolution without feeling their belief in God is threatened.

[photon]

Originally Posted by SeanCharles

Thats one thing I wish was a bit better around here in that we should be aloud to ask questions, especially when discussing such a topic, without getting made fun of or called an idiot just because we don't know or are questioning its merit.

I can almost guarantee that someone asking honest questions and having an open mind about the answers will not be made fun of or called an idiot. No one's been called an idiot yet.

It's when someone refuses to look at things reasonably or ignores what's being discussed to continue to advocate an ideological viewpoint is when that person deserves to be ignored.. If a poster kept posting about their flat earth in spite of everything to the contrary, eventually you have no other option but to leave them be (and maybe at least think of them as an idiot).

Originally Posted by SeanCharles

Discussing things in an unthreatening manner is how we expand our knowledge and develop new ideas...

I think people here are willing to do that, no one's been called an idiot yet.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Inglewood Jack

I'm one of those people that reads things in the voice of the poster's avatar, so what you said here caused me to be super confused for a few moments.

I literally laughed out loud at this as I never made the connection. Sadly I don't look that different from the good professor. Alas, scientific theory is not my forté.

[photon]

Relativity is one of those things that I don't think anyone really understands unless they understand the math. Unfortunately I don't, it's on my nerd bucket list to take a course and really learn the math.