otseng wrote:There are two issues here. One issue is abiogenesis. Another is geocentrism. Biogenesis is foundational to creationism. Geocentrism is not. If abiogenesis is correct, it is a death blow to creationism. If geocentrism is incorrect, it does little to creationism.
I agree. Geocentrism addresses a different part of the bible, which has already been accepted as metaphorical. The trouble with "if abiogenesis is correct" is that we don't have irrefutable proof
, because it happened so incredibly long ago that it is extremely difficult to study. Abiogenesis may well be correct, but in the absence of a complete description of 100% of the events, it is necessary to look at the data that do exist, and the interpretations of them. The interpretations are plausible, but certainly not the final story. One is certainly free to say "nah, it's unlikely," based on common sense, but common sense is so often wrong when science is concerned. Witness, for example, geocentrism.
otseng wrote:As I've stated before, I've never argued that the laws of physics have changed during the Flood. As for physical laws changing in the past, the only ones I've heard espousing that have been evolutionists.
I think it is necessary to accept the idea that the laws of physics were different, because this is the only way to invalidate the radiometric dating of Precambrian rocks. YECs like to say that the rate of decay was faster in the first week or so--for which we must also posit that the energy release per decay was vastly lower than it is now. Otherwise, we are stuck with the known decay rates, and there is no way to escape the conclusion that the earth is really, really old, and that the rocks that were supposedly laid down in the flood actually were deposited over the course of about half a billion years.
Agreed, you haven't said that it is necessary to change the laws of physics pre-flood, but many YECs insist that decay rates were much higher pre-flood, and the only way for this to happen is if the laws of physics were different.
I make this point only to try to limit the argument about pre-flood things. I think it's non-productive (at least, it has always been non-productive so far).
I peeked at the post you cited on evolutionists stating that the laws of physics were different at the beginning, and I see what you mean. But, like abiogenesis, the BB happened long ago, and all we have are the traces. Our current understanding doesn't cover what happened then. My bet is that the laws of physics were entirely the same as now, but since we know only some of those laws, the events of the BB seem strange to us. It's rather like discovering heliocentrism, when the current understanding was that the earth was solid and still, and the center of the universe. The known laws didn't apply to a twirling ball supported by nothing.
But this is fundamentally different from what I've suggested. For the BB, the data obtained from the universe point to some sort of rapid migration of stuff from a rather condensed bit. Fine. That's what the data indicate. Our job is to develop models to explain how this happened.
For the flood and the pre-flood world, we need to start with the data as well. The data indicate that Precambrian rocks are really, really old. They indicate that the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic rocks were deposited over a span of millions of years. We can, and have, developed models to explain how this happened. However, there is a strong desire in some quarters to explain this by means of a recent creation and a world-wide flood. To do so requires some way of invalidating those rock ages, and the many other geological principles that are revealed by close inspection of the earth. My reading of the creationist explanations is that "normal" things happened after the flood, but before that, "things were different." If they were not different, then creation cannot have occurred only 6000 years ago.
otseng wrote:Jose wrote:I guess that the important question I would ask is this: Why is it so easy to overlook the data that simply cannot be explained by a Flood Model
I would admit that the FM has unanswered questions (at least for now). But so does the UM (Uniformitarianism Model) and the EM (Evolutionary Model). However, when we compare the FM and the UM, the UM has fundamental problems that has not been sufficiently addressed. So, as I compare the two, I see less problems with the FM than with the UM.
I'll have to go back to the UM thread and think about it. In the meantime, I'll agree with Dilettante about the terminology, which is relevant both to geology and to evolution. The old terms are not exactly relevant any more. Uniformitarianism was invented as the opposite of Catastrophism, where the latter referred to the world-wide catastrophe of the Flood. As Dilettante has noted, there are lots of catastrophes that occur, from Mt. St. Helens to Chixulub to the burial of Herculaneum by Mt. Vesuvius to vast numbers of floods and landslides. Perhaps, strictly speaking, Uniformitarianism, like evolutionary Gradualism, implies slow and steady change at a linear rate. We know it doesn't work like that, so these definitions are wrong. For both of them, the best way to think of it is that the models accept the fact that lots of things happen (and we've seen lots of them), and until we can prove otherwise, we work with the assumption that the same kinds of things happened in the past.
We see volcanic eruptions now, we see subduction now, we see landslides and floods now. These are catastrophes of various kinds. There is no rational reason to pretend they did not occur in the past. Thus, we interpret the Morrison Formation as volcanic ash that settled over a wide area, smothering dinosaurs just as Mt. Vesuvius smothered Herculaneum. We interpret the lava flows of the Basin and Range as lava flows rather like those we can observe on the slopes of Kilauea. We interpret the thick layers of sandstone that make such beautiful cliffs in Canyon de Chelly as lithified sand dunes, just like sand dunes we can observe today. And so it goes...some of the things we see recorded in geological formations are things that would have been gradual (erosional surfaces, for example), while others reveal catastrophic events (volcanic ash, iridium layers and impact crystals, etc).
This gets me back to the question quoted above. It induces me to expand it, as well. As I see it, there are various strata that seem inescapably to have been formed on dry land, but that are both above and below shale and limestone that form underwater. I can't see how this can possibly fit the FM. Nor can I explain the footprints that have been discovered on rocks that have only recently weathered out of cliffs, when the FM states that the animals that made the tracks were killed in the flood, and the cliffs weren't formed until the flood receded. These are things that, it seems to me, cannot be explained by the FM. They contradict its fundamental assumptions.
Now, YEC explained the footprints by saying that the flood went up, then down, then up again, and in the periods in which it went down, animals scurried around on the mud. This may be an explanation, but it violates the basic idea of the flood happening so fast that it was over in 40 days of continuous rain. I have not yet heard an explanation for the dry-land deposits.
So, how do we justify overlooking this information? How do we justify ignoring the thousands and thousands of radiometric age determinations that all agree? If the FM states that Precambrian rock is unstratified, and uses the Vishnu Schist as its example, how do we justify ignoring the stratification of the Vishnu Schist?
To expand the question, I'll ask whether it is sufficient, in developing an explanation, to list several observations that could be explained by the model, without considering other explanations or other observations?
It seems to me that this is the fundamental characteristic of evidence for creationism: that each bit of evidence explains a few observations, but does not consider other observations or other explanations. To publish in scientific journals, it is pretty much required that one consider and rule out alternate explanations as well as consider data beyond the immediate observations. Yet, this rule seems not to be followed when offering evidence for creation.
otseng wrote:To me, the Anthropic Principle is the strongest evidence that God designed life.
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As you've alluded to, Intelligent Design is another area that points to Creationism. As to it being shown that it is bogus, I must've missed that.
I've posted these things here and there, but I'll summarize.
The Anthropic Principle is not evidence--it's philosophy. As I noted above, it fails to rule out alternative explanations, the most salient being that the world would look just like it does if normal geology and normal evolution took place. The
only proof that an Anthropic Principle exists will be to find the god who set it up and have him tell us. Until then, it is a guess.
ID, on the other hand, is demonstrably irrelevant. It
assumes that evolution had a goal (us), and proves statistically that evolution would be unable to achieve that goal. Since evolution has no goals, this assumption is flat-out wrong, so the statistical proof
rules out a fake model of evolution. It doesn't matter that many people have the misconception that evolution has a goal. It doesn't. ID simply proves that their misconception is wrong. The "irreducible complexity" bit is just as wrong as the "complex specified information" bit. It assumes a fake model of evolution in which whole suites of genes suddenly appear to make a complex structure, and shows that this cannot happen. So what? That's not how evolution works. Their entire arguments are based on the fact that most people don't understand evolution, so they can play with fake models and show them wrong. They do this because they cannot rule out
real evolution.
