Evidence for Creationism, is there any?

[FreddieFreeloader]

I found this quote in the "Why do you believe in Creationism or Evolution?" thread, as a response to a claim that there was no scientific backing for Creationism.

No scienticfic backing? What do you call Louis Pastuer's studys that disproved spontaneous generation? How do you explain the the fact that the earth is perfectly placed, that if it were just little bit over here or a little bit over there that we'd either burn up or freeze? Have you ever studied the complexity of the human body, of a plant or animal, or even of a microscopic cell?

As evolutionists (I'm doing the popular thing of calling evolution, abiogenesis and cosmology the same for sake of simplicity)
provide backing for their theories Creationists (specifically Young Earth Creationists) try to explain "scientifically" why that evidence doesn't hold.

I observe two things in above quote. First a misunderstanding of the implications of scientific studies (here in the case of Pasteur's experiment), but secondly, and more importantly, in the question of the burden of proof.

On to my question: Ignoring whether or not Creationists are correct in disproving the theories... Does disproving evolution, prove creationism?

I think that the answer is a loud and clear NO!

Then I ask you, what evidence do we have for Creationism?

[otseng]

The flood...point taken (albeit i would the creation model consider to be falisfied then...but that's a matter for that other thread).

Is there anything else?

Life cannot be created out of non-life by natural processes.
A corollary of this would be that life does not exist outside of the earth.
These predictions would be falsifiable by the SETI program detecting life elsewhere.

1. IF the flood did occur, it occurred more than 6000 years ago, conservatively. This is based on evidence from bristlecone pines and other plant data. Now, this doesn't go against our assumptions since we have not assumed in this thread anything about when creation or the flood occurred, only that creation was a one time event and a global flood did occur.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.

2. The water canopy is an untenable hypothesis.

I'm open to changing my mind. Why do you think it's untenable?

3. Radiometric dating is fairly reliable, at least for ballpark figures. We would not confuse 6000 years with 6 million years.

This should be discussed in another thread as I suspect there can be much discussion about this.

4. The human population growth models extrapolating back into the past are not reliable.

The PGE are used as an estimate, not as an accurate indicator.

5. It seems to me that for Noah and company to survive the flood event, supernatural intervention would have had to occur at that point. This would violate the additional assumption I had asked for.

Why so?

6. I admit I did not look EVERYTHING. I would note that I did not find what I considered an adequate explanation of the observed sequencing of fossils. It is very hard for me to accept that, under the conditions of a global flood, especially where a lot of 'stirring' occurs, the fossils would not be more mixed up. Why are there NEVER any dinosaur fossils with humans? Surely, some dinosaurs would have hydrological properties similar to humans. Why no trilobites with more modern animals? etc.

There certainly are a lot of questions that the geologic record presents to us - to both creationists as well as evolutionists. And these as well should be in separate threads (in addition to the several threads already that touch on the geologic record).

1. Which model is simpler? Occam's razor says we should always pick the simplest hypothesis to explain any phenomenon. SImplest is often defined as the one which requires the fewest or most basic assumptions. THis can be a somewhat subjective judgment at times.
2. Which model has the greatest explanatory power. The creation model has a problem here, since allowing the intervention of a supernatural deity as an explanation in the past means you could not rule it out in the future. This makes prediction somewhat difficult, if not impossible (unless we can read God's mind).

And I would maintain that the global flood has the greatest explanatory power as well as being the most elegant.

For instance, it answers all these questions in one fell swoop:
- Extinction of the dinosaurs
- Why the prehistoric world had large animals/plants and now it does not
- The origin of the Grand Canyon and other canyons
- The existence of the mid-Oceanic ridge
- The formation of the continental shelves
- The formation of ocean trenches
- Magnetic variations on the ocean floor
- The formation of submarine canyons
- The formation of coal and oil
- The existence of frozen mammoths
- The formation of major mountain ranges
- The phenomenon of parallel rock stratas
- The apparent jigsaw fit of the continents

3. The model which has the widest applicability. Evolutionary principles are inherently applicable to life anywhere. The creation model, as proposed so far, only considers life on earth, and only the particular life we see on earth.

Are you saying that evolutionary principles applies elsewhere besides the earth? If so, please start a thread to show this.

[jwu]

Life cannot be created out of non-life by natural processes.
A corollary of this would be that life does not exist outside of the earth.
These predictions would be falsifiable by the SETI program detecting life elsewhere.

Please elaborate on that. The discovery of alien life would falsify the creation model? What part of teh creation model would prevent an ad-hoc change to "ok, then God created life there too"? Would you personally change your mind if alien life was discovered?

[Jose]

And I would maintain that the global flood has the greatest explanatory power as well as being the most elegant.

For instance, it answers all these questions in one fell swoop:
- Extinction of the dinosaurs
- Why the prehistoric world had large animals/plants and now it does not
- The origin of the Grand Canyon and other canyons
- The existence of the mid-Oceanic ridge
- The formation of the continental shelves
- The formation of ocean trenches
- Magnetic variations on the ocean floor
- The formation of submarine canyons
- The formation of coal and oil
- The existence of frozen mammoths
- The formation of major mountain ranges
- The phenomenon of parallel rock stratas
- The apparent jigsaw fit of the continents

Indeed, we can imagine a way for a flood model to answer these questions. We can also interpret the same data the way mainstream science does. Simply being able to explain some findings by an hypothesis is not sufficient. It is necessary to identify alternative explanations as well, and to distinguish among them. It is necessary to test the predictions of the hypothesis, and to assess whether additional data also fit that hypothesis. In order to make the flood hypothesis fit the additional data, it is necessary to throw in so many modifications and special circumstances that it pretty much requires divine intervention. Here, I have presented this as a bald assertion; to deal with it fully, we should present the data in The Flood as Science thread.

[juliod]

Indeed, we can imagine a way for a flood model to answer these questions.

No! No no no!

You can only imagine that if you pretend you don't know the relevant facts about each of those things.

In reality, scientists who have studied each of those, without exception, have concluded that the respective facts are evidence against creationism. And in turn, each of those fields has been denounced by creationists at the time as lies, satanism, atheism, the gay agenda, etc etc.

This thread is supposed to be about evidence for the flood. A mere list of some of the scientific evidence that disproves the flood with the tag "this proves the flood" is a mere absurdity.

DanZ

[otseng]

Life cannot be created out of non-life by natural processes.
A corollary of this would be that life does not exist outside of the earth.
These predictions would be falsifiable by the SETI program detecting life elsewhere.

Please elaborate on that. The discovery of alien life would falsify the creation model?

Also, bear in mind that this is my personal prediction based on my view of creationism. As far as I know, I have not seen anyone else make this kind of prediction.

If abiogenesis is true, then one would expect that life could've formed on another planet. And if biological evolution is true, then these initial life forms would evolve into more complex life forms. Eventually, they would be able to send radio signals into outer space and say (translated into English of course), "Hey out there, can anyone hear me?"

What part of teh creation model would prevent an ad-hoc change to "ok, then God created life there too"?

If the aliens told us, "We were created by God", then I would tend to believe them.

Would you personally change your mind if alien life was discovered?

Seriously, if SETI detected other life forms on other planets, then I'll end all my discussions on Creation vs Evolution and convert over to an allegorical interpretation of Genesis. To me, this would be the utmost proof of abiogenesis and evolution.

[jwu]

If abiogenesis is true, then one would expect that life could've formed on another planet. And if biological evolution is true, then these initial life forms would evolve into more complex life forms. Eventually, they would be able to send radio signals into outer space and say (translated into English of course), "Hey out there, can anyone hear me?"

Quote:
What part of teh creation model would prevent an ad-hoc change to "ok, then God created life there too"?

If the aliens told us, "We were created by God", then I would tend to believe them. Smile

If they didn't do that, what part of the creation model would stop you from saying that this life was created too nonetheless? While you seem to be quite serious about indeed considering this to be the result of abiogenesis then, and i take your word for it, i do not see how this is derived from the creation model.

[otseng]

If they didn't do that, what part of the creation model would stop you from saying that this life was created too nonetheless? While you seem to be quite serious about indeed considering this to be the result of abiogenesis then, and i take your word for it, i do not see how this is derived from the creation model.

Creationism does not subscribe to abiogenesis. Creationism believes that the first life forms on earth were created by a supernatural entity. They did not come from non-life through natural processes.

Let me present another argument in support of the CM here. I believe the evidence favors the conclusion that the earth is near or at the center of the universe rather than the earth not having any special place in the universe. If the earth is at/near the center, then I can conclude that we are special and unique to the creator. So, I highly doubt that the creator would've created any other life on other planets.

[jwu]

Creationism does not subscribe to abiogenesis. Creationism believes that the first life forms on earth were created by a supernatural entity. They did not come from non-life through natural processes.

Ok, i got that part. But how could it possibly be shown that the alien life came into existence by abiogenesis, and not as the result of creation?

Let me present another argument in support of the CM here. I believe the evidence favors the conclusion that the earth is near or at the center of the universe rather than the earth not having any special place in the universe. If the earth is at/near the center, then I can conclude that we are special and unique to the creator. So, I highly doubt that the creator would've created any other life on other planets.

Let's take a look at the opposite: If the earth is not at the center of the universe, would that falsify the creation model?

[juliod]

I believe the evidence favors the conclusion that the earth is near or at the center of the universe rather than the earth not having any special place in the universe. If the earth is at/near the center, then I can conclude that we are special and unique to the creator.

Are you really serious? Or is this whole web site you run a Big Joke?

Someone might have believed this, back when we thought the stars were points of light on (or in) the outermost sphere of those that contained the sun, moon, and planets.

DanZ

[micatala]

Let me present another argument in support of the CM here. I believe the evidence favors the conclusion that the earth is near or at the center of the universe rather than the earth not having any special place in the universe.

In most of the current models of the universe that I have seen, one could consider either ANY point or NO pont to be the 'center' of the universe.
Here is one example of the 'expanding balloon' analogy for the universe. If (topologically speaking) the univese is closed with no boundary or edge and is 'symmetric', there are are no 'preferred points' which could serve as a center. A balloon is a two-dimensional example.

A cone, on the other hand, even an infinite one, would have a preferred point, namely the tip. A 2-dimensional being living on a cone could determine that the tip is a special point, even if they could not perceive the 'sharpness' of the point from within the surface of the cone.

There are three-dimensional analogs to these two-dimensional surfaces. My understanding is, as far as we know, whatever shape our universe is, there are no 'preferred points' except those created by massive objects (like black holes), and these seem to be distributed in such a way that no one of them can really be considered 'special.'

micatala wrote:

1. IF the flood did occur, it occurred more than 6000 years ago, conservatively. This is based on evidence from bristlecone pines and other plant data. Now, this doesn't go against our assumptions since we have not assumed in this thread anything about when creation or the flood occurred, only that creation was a one time event and a global flood did occur.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.

I was simply saying that if the flood did occur, it did not occur within the time frame given by the usual YEC scenario. If we are allowing OEC, then this point is irrelevant.

2. The water canopy is an untenable hypothesis.

I'm open to changing my mind. Why do you think it's untenable?

I was referring to the point made in the other threads. The water canopy would create too much atmospheric pressure, and a greenhouse effect which would raise temperatures beyond what life as we know it could survive.

3. Radiometric dating is fairly reliable, at least for ballpark figures. We would not confuse 6000 years with 6 million years.

This should be discussed in another thread as I suspect there can be much discussion about this.

Granted. I have not perused all the discussion on this, but I would say that I have not seen any convincing evidence that dating techniques are so highly unreliable as to be off by orders of magnitudes. I would certainly be willing to leave this issue for a different thread. Jose made a point about this here . Note that the same page has some information on dating techniques.

In general, my numbered comments were an attempt (possibly not a very good one ) to summarize the gist of some of the discussion from the other threads. I wanted to avoid rehashing those issues, and hoped there would be at least a few details we could 'settle on'. Perhas this is a vain hope?

5. It seems to me that for Noah and company to survive the flood event, supernatural intervention would have had to occur at that point. This would violate the additional assumption I had asked for.

Why so?

The point has been made that the hydroplate theory with its gushing geysers of water, its rapid movement of techtonic plates, the accompanying earth quakes, etc. would produce so much turmoil that Noah and company could not have survived. I believe AIG has even noted problems with this (but right now my browser is being wierd and I can't get there). I have read passages where creationists have said that God supernaturally protected Noah from these effects. The tacit assumption is that Noah needed the protection.

6. I admit I did not look EVERYTHING. I would note that I did not find what I considered an adequate explanation of the observed sequencing of fossils. It is very hard for me to accept that, under the conditions of a global flood, especially where a lot of 'stirring' occurs, the fossils would not be more mixed up. Why are there NEVER any dinosaur fossils with humans? Surely, some dinosaurs would have hydrological properties similar to humans. Why no trilobites with more modern animals? etc.

There certainly are a lot of questions that the geologic record presents to us - to both creationists as well as evolutionists. And these as well should be in separate threads (in addition to the several threads already that touch on the geologic record).

Again, I was hoping we could reach some conclusions based onthe other threads. My main point is that if we have evidence which falsifies all or part of the CM, whatever other evidence is provided for CM is irrelevant. The sorting of fossils that we see seems inconceivable to me to have occurred through the activity of some flood. I will review the relevant threads, as I think there are some.

3. The model which has the widest applicability. Evolutionary principles are inherently applicable to life anywhere. The creation model, as proposed so far, only considers life on earth, and only the particular life we see on earth.

Are you saying that evolutionary principles applies elsewhere besides the earth? If so, please start a thread to show this.

I'll consider that. Upon reflection, this is making some assumptions that life elsewhere would share at least some of the characteristics of life here. I'm not saying life does exist elsewhere, only that if there is and its reproduction involves somewhat the same mechanisms of life here (eg. mutation, some sort of genetic coding, etc.) then natural selection other evolutionary mechanisms and principles would also apply.