Do you understand those on the other side?

[Jose Fly]

As I've pointed out many times (probably too many times), I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian environment. I was taught young-earth creationism from an early age, was told prayer and reading the Bible were the answer to most of life's problems and questions, and witnessed all sorts of "interesting" things such as speaking in tongues, faith healing, end times predictions, etc.

Yet despite being completely immersed in this culture, I can't recall a time in my life when I ever believed any of it. However, unlike some of my peers at the time I didn't really find it boring. In fact, I found a lot of it to be rather fascinating because.....very little of it made any sense to me. I just could not understand the people, their beliefs, their way of thinking, or much of anything that I saw and heard. When I saw them anointing with oil someone who had the flu and later saw the virus spread (of course), I could not understand what they were thinking. When I saw them make all sorts of failed predictions about the Soviet Union and the end times, yet never even acknowledge their errors while continuing to make more predictions, I was baffled. Speaking in tongues was of particular interest to me because it really made no sense to me.

In the years that I've been debating creationists it's the same thing. When I see them say "no transitional fossils" or "no new genetic information" only to ignore examples of those things when they're presented, I can't relate to that way of thinking at all. When I see them demand evidence for things only to ignore it after it's provided, I can't relate. When I see them quote mine a scientific paper and after someone points it out they completely ignore it, I can't relate.

Now to be clear, I think I "understand" some of what's behind these behaviors (i.e., the psychological factors), but what I don't understand is how the people engaging in them seem to be completely oblivious to it all. What goes on in their mind when they demand "show me the evidence", ignore everything that's provided in response, and then come back later and make the same demand all over again? Are they so blinded by the need to maintain their beliefs that they literally block out all memories of it? Again....I just don't get it.

So the point of discussion for this thread is....how about you? For the "evolutionists", can you relate to the creationists' way of thinking and behaviors? For the creationists, are there behaviors from the other side that baffle you, and you just don't understand? Do you look at folks like me and think to yourselves, "I just cannot relate to his way of thinking?"

Or is it just me?

[Jose Fly]

The "other" viewpoint is simply that the record could be evidence of true discontinuity, pay attention.

What do you mean by "true discontinuity"?

I mean not simply an apparent discontinuity, like the absence of expected fossils is real rather than an artifact of poor preservation, like things we think will have existed didn't actually ever exist.

A discontinuous process for generating life...

What do you mean by that?

A process where morphology changes but without the thousands of discrete intermediate steps we'd expect from evolution and without the great time periods.

Okay, so is it accurate to say that your position is....since the record is discontinuous, the process that created it must also be discontinuous?

[JoeyKnothead]

So far Jose, Diogenes, Clownboat and Dr. No Gods have all shied away from answering these key questions:

As I explained, you asked your question as I was already trying (unsuccessfully) to get you to answer my questions.

IOW, you were playing the stereotypical creationist game where you won't answer anyone else's questions, while demanding that we answer yours.
...

This, so dang much.

Though I think the reason is obvious.

[Jose Fly]

So far Jose, Diogenes, Clownboat and Dr. No Gods have all shied away from answering these key questions:

As I explained, you asked your question as I was already trying (unsuccessfully) to get you to answer my questions.

IOW, you were playing the stereotypical creationist game where you won't answer anyone else's questions, while demanding that we answer yours.
...

This, so dang much.

Though I think the reason is obvious.

[Diogenes]

What is "ignorant" about asking if there are any gaps and how big they are and how many of them there are?

Against my better judgment [sigh] I will try to explain. ... tho' I feel (just a little) as if I'm trying to teach the alphabet to a truculent snail.
OK, here goes:
When you fill in a gap in the fossil record with a perfect example of a transitionary species then BINGO! you've answered the objection, demolished the argument. When you are then met with [Homer Simpson voice] "Doh! Butt... uh... now 'dere's TWO gaps...," you then fill those in with two more examples and so on, ad infinitum. Pretty soon you've filled in so many gaps, there really are no meaningful gaps left. Did you understand any of that?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Inquirer in post #475]

I never asked about rarity did I? You don't know what a "gap" is yet you'll readily accuse theists when it suits your rhetorical purposes, of making "god of the gaps" arguments, can you see a problem with your answer here? of course you know what a gap is.

As much as you know what the word "truth" means. I gave two examples of what could be gaps, that are different. Which one do you mean?

Seriously? you really think I was restricting the answer to those three examples? come on, be serious.

Just taking the post literally ... you did offer only 3 options to choose from.

I think 7, 8 and 9 are excellent suggestions.

So why do you have a problem with evolutionists making reasonable interpolations across gaps in a similar way? Don't you think 7, 8 and 9 are far stronger candidates than mere "suggestions"? If not, that is very telling.

So you cannot quantify the completeness of the fossil record, clearly it is going to be incomplete even if evolution were true, but you cannot quantify the degree of completeness, you cannot quantify the distinct number of gaps between some ancestor fossil and some descendent fossil, you cannot say if the gaps dominate or if the fossils dominate, you cannot say anything it seems.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist, or even a biologist, ando I've never researched the question in that level of detail and don't plan to because I have no interest in the answer. But if you really wanted to know the answer the data is out there ... just make the effort and find out yourself if it is important to you being able to understand the subject.

Yet despite this inability to quantify these things you insist that they are evidence for continuity, that the observed discontinuity is only apparent, absolutely not real.

I've never once on this forum, in this thread or any other, made a single comment about continuity or discontinuity in the fossil record. Yet you claim I've even insisted on it!

As I've been saying this is all a matter of interpretation and I cannot take such a huge absence of data and pretend to myself it doesn't matter, and I certainly can't berate others who see the entire thing as hand waving and make believe. I once saw it as you do, I interpreted it as you do, I reinforced it as you do by over stating the minor and dismissing the major.

How do you know it doesn't matter, if you don't know anything quantitative about the "gaps" and therefore how much data is absent? It seems you just don't want to believe evolution, or learn about it, and are arguing against it based purely on personal incredulity and nothing else. You can't seem to refute any of it with counter-arguments based on actual errors in the science or observations (major or minor).

[Inquirer]

What is "ignorant" about asking if there are any gaps and how big they are and how many of them there are?

Against my better judgment [sigh] I will try to explain. ... tho' I feel (just a little) as if I'm trying to teach the alphabet to a truculent snail.
OK, here goes:
When you fill in a gap in the fossil record with a perfect example of a transitionary species then BINGO! you've answered the objection, demolished the argument. When you are then met with [Homer Simpson voice] "Doh! Butt... uh... now 'dere's TWO gaps...," you then fill those in with two more examples and so on, ad infinitum. Pretty soon you've filled in so many gaps, there really are no meaningful gaps left.

Did you understand any of that?

You mumble a little but I get the picture.

[Inquirer]

[Replying to Inquirer in post #475]

I never asked about rarity did I? You don't know what a "gap" is yet you'll readily accuse theists when it suits your rhetorical purposes, of making "god of the gaps" arguments, can you see a problem with your answer here? of course you know what a gap is.

As much as you know what the word "truth" means. I gave two examples of what could be gaps, that are different. Which one do you mean?

Seriously? you really think I was restricting the answer to those three examples? come on, be serious.

Just taking the post literally ... you did offer only 3 options to choose from.

I think 7, 8 and 9 are excellent suggestions.

So why do you have a problem with evolutionists making reasonable interpolations across gaps in a similar way? Don't you think 7, 8 and 9 are far stronger candidates than mere "suggestions"? If not, that is very telling.

Interpolating when we KNOW there are intermediate values is one thing, claiming there ARE intermediate values when we do not know, is a very different thing. Evolution dies a death UNLESS there WERE millions and millions of intermediate values across billions of years. If there were but they were never preserved is a possibility but so to is the scenario that they never did exist at all. The fossil data - being hugely "gappy" therefore cannot settle the question, the "gaps" could be simply bad preservation but could equally be genuine reflecting a true absence of these expected organisms.

All I am saying is that the fossil data can be interpreted in different ways.

So you cannot quantify the completeness of the fossil record, clearly it is going to be incomplete even if evolution were true, but you cannot quantify the degree of completeness, you cannot quantify the distinct number of gaps between some ancestor fossil and some descendent fossil, you cannot say if the gaps dominate or if the fossils dominate, you cannot say anything it seems.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist, or even a biologist, ando I've never researched the question in that level of detail and don't plan to because I have no interest in the answer. But if you really wanted to know the answer the data is out there ... just make the effort and find out yourself if it is important to you being able to understand the subject.

Yet despite this inability to quantify these things you insist that they are evidence for continuity, that the observed discontinuity is only apparent, absolutely not real.

I've never once on this forum, in this thread or any other, made a single comment about continuity or discontinuity in the fossil record. Yet you claim I've even insisted on it!

As I've been saying this is all a matter of interpretation and I cannot take such a huge absence of data and pretend to myself it doesn't matter, and I certainly can't berate others who see the entire thing as hand waving and make believe. I once saw it as you do, I interpreted it as you do, I reinforced it as you do by over stating the minor and dismissing the major.

How do you know it doesn't matter, if you don't know anything quantitative about the "gaps" and therefore how much data is absent? It seems you just don't want to believe evolution, or learn about it, and are arguing against it based purely on personal incredulity and nothing else. You can't seem to refute any of it with counter-arguments based on actual errors in the science or observations (major or minor).

I used to believe evolution, I had convinced myself that it was the truth and was able to fit observations into the theory. No matter what we find it is always possible to convince ourselves that we're right, so oddities, contradictions do not matter because we've convinced ourselves that no observation can undermine evolution. If anyone suggest that X or Y is a problem for evolution then the evolutionist dismisses that idea and laughs at the objector because they can ALWAYS INTERPRET the data to fit their belief in evolution.

So all of this comes to one outcome here - I personally no longer interpret the fossil data as I used to, I am no longer prepared to stretch credibility to the extremes necessary to support evolution. It is absolutely intellectually sound to interpret the data as one finds it, true gaps, huge gaps, absence of fossils where there should be no absence of fossils and so on.

If you disagree then disagree but don't insinuate that my interpretation is unsound, there are many gaps and I have come to regard these gaps as real, as evidence of something.

All that people are doing here is attacking someone who chooses to interpret the data differently to how they choose to interpret it, yet we are each just interpreting it.

[We_Are_VENOM]

Who says abiogenesis is impossible? I believe it is entirely possible and we just don't know the mechanistic details yet.

That is like Christians saying..

"We believe Jesus will return, we just dont know the details of the flight. We dont know the time, day, or year of the flight, we don't know which aircraft, coach or first class. Southwest or Air Force One?"


"But he will definitely be here, though."


Is that good enough for you? Probably not.

Well, vice versa.

It has not been proven to be impossible meaning there is a nonzero probability that it is possible.

In that case, neither has the existence of God so heyyyy.

It also makes sense as a general idea for how life came to be ... especially when compared to a supernatural alternative.

I tend to disagree.

Chemistry doesn't have a brain to enable it to make choices.

For irreducible complexity, you need a brain..for previously mentioned reasons.

Atoms combine to form molecules based on their outer electron configurations and the rules for forming ionic and covalent bonds, crystal structures, etc. Molecules combine to make structures, proteins, and countless other assemblies based on the rules of chemistry. These are neither chance, nor choice, and anything but nonsense.

As I showed with link in another post, without the proper fine tuning, you wouldn't even have atoms to form the molecules.

And? I'll admit the probability of this all happening is very small (although I'd replace mathematical precision with chemical precision), but is isn't zero.

Very small is the understate of the century.

The laws which governs our universe have actual values.

The universe has been engineered with mathematical precision for human life to exist.

But mad props to you for at least admitting that the probability is small.

I am compelled to like this post because of that alone.

We know we had an atmosphere on Earth, land and lots of water 4 billion years ago, volcanic eruptions providing more chemicals, sunlight providing photons at wavelengths from the UV to the IR which can initiate chemical reactions and provide heat, lighting, etc. And this is some 600 millions years after Earth formed. Nonzero probability of life forming in those conditions and time frame.

Without the proper fine tuning, there would be no initial chemical reactions.

That is kinda the point.

Nothing to with the processes on Earth starting 4.6 billion years ago. How the universe formed is irrelevant if the clock starts 4.6 billion years ago, which it does if the problem is the development of life on Earth. No need to even consider the mechanisn of origin of the universe at all.

You have the same problem here that you have with evolution/abiogenesis (cart before the horse).

You have to explain..

1. How the universe originated in the first place...

2. How did it begin with low entropy as an initial condition...

Because remember, based on the way entropy works, things don't become ordered from disorder....but rather, things become disordered from order.

That is why the low entropy was an initial condition...someone put the dials and parameters in place FIRST, and let it go....an this have been slowly becoming disordered (second law).

It is like that automatic floor buffer/polisher thing you see at Walmart. It requires no operator, it just goes around polishing the floors...and it has a motion detector that allows it to stop whenever someone gets too close...it turns corners and EVERYTHING.

We've all seen it, but just in case some of us haven't..dig this..



Now, the point is, everything this robotic machine can do...were based on initial conditions set out by the intelligent designers as the machine was created.

Those conditions were added in to the system by the engineers...so when the "go" button is pressed on the machine (analogous to the expansion)...the dials/parameters were already set, and the machine simply do what it was programmed to do.

Now of course, the laws which govern our universe are much more complex (10^10^123) than the ones which govern the machine...so it makes no sense to think that the universe wasn't designed, while having no problem with the machine being designed (the fact that you know the machine was designed isn't the point).

Unless, of course, you are fine with committing the taxi cab fallacy, which says a lot more about you than the argument.

Yep ... and it appears to have taken some 600 million years after Earth formed to get there.

Yeah, sprinkle hundreds of millions of years on it, and POOF, the problem goes away, huh?

LOL.

The canvas you describe is just the development of this one tiny planet we live on ... Earth. We've yet to discover if there are other worlds that may have skyscrapers, life, and whatever that life may have produced. But we do know that things like stars, planets, comets, nebulas, black holes, neutron stars, etc. are spread throughout the observable universe and that these structures arose from matter behaving according to the (nonrandom) laws of physics, chemistry, gravity and other forces. No supernatural being was needed to orchestrate or plan it all, and pure randomness would not produce specific structures (and gazillions of them) like stars and planets. There is a lot of nonrandomness in the universe.

God could have created all of that good stuff for the purpose of man to marvel at his creation...which is in fact, what we do.

Sure ... when is judgement day so I can put it on my calendar?

Sure, scoff away.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to We_Are_VENOM in post #488]

But he will definitely be here, though.

That's very different from saying that abiogenesis is possible. You're sure (definitely) ... I'm claiming possibility.

The universe has been engineered with mathematical precision for human life to exist.

Wow ... that is some statement. The entire universe was created just for humans to exist and wonder at it. Amazing thought. Good thing we developed telescopes and other tools to see more of it then, otherwise the parts not visible to the naked eye would be a total waste of all that creating. You sure give humans a special place in it all ... far more special that we probably deserve given that a measly few million years ago this Earth, full of life forms, had no humans present at all.

Without the proper fine tuning, there would be no initial chemical reactions.

That is kinda the point.

For my worldview, how the universe, atoms, etc. came into existence is irrelevant. My clock starts 4.6 billion years ago when our solar system formed (we're pretty sure of that number), and by then everything that existed, including matter and the physical constants, laws, etc. were in place. I don't need to know anything prior to 4.6 billion years ago to be convinced that the planets formed from the accretion disk surrounding the Sun when it formed, Earth eventually cooled enough for life to appear in the ballpark of 4 billion years ago (and how that happened is also irrelevant ... evolution does not depend on that mechanism), and evolution explains how life diversified from that point until today. The mechanism for origin of the universe has absolutely nothing to do with that scenario. Good that people are trying to figure that out, but it plays no role in what happened on Earth from its formation until now.

1. How the universe originated in the first place...

2. How did it begin with low entropy as an initial condition...

See above ... completely irrelevant to the happenings on Earth from 4.6 billion years ago until today. Sorry you wasted time on the Walmart floor buffer analogy, but how the universe came into existence, whether gods were involved, etc. has nothing to do with how things proceeded on Earth after it formed. None of those events depend on how the universe came to be.

Yeah, sprinkle hundreds of millions of years on it, and POOF, the problem goes away, huh?

What problem? This is apparently about how long it took from Earth's formation to when the first life forms appeared, based on the oldest evidence for life that we've found to date. It took so long probably because it is a difficult and rare event (at least in this solar system), but difficult and rare doesn't mean impossible ... we are here after all.

God could have created all of that good stuff for the purpose of man to marvel at his creation...which is in fact, what we do.

He sure thinks a lot of us then. Strange though that he'd kill off all humans but 8 in a global flood after creating the entire universe just for us to marvel at. I'm sniffing some major inconsistencies here if humans are so special that the entire universe was created for our benefit.

[Diogenes]

Yeah, sprinkle hundreds of millions of years on it, and POOF, the problem goes away, huh?
....
God could have created all of that good stuff for the purpose of man to marvel at his creation...which is in fact, what we do.
....
Sure, scoff away.