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Thread: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Which Biblical creation myth will be argued for? There's two in Genesis and they contradict one another.
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Eh to be technical neither version really contradicts the other in the original manuscript as far as I know. Regardless the whole concept relies upon fallacy, assumption and so called leaps of faith. I'm sad I didn't see this challenge earlier.

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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Elfdude View Post
    Eh to be technical neither version really contradicts the other in the original manuscript as far as I know. Regardless the whole concept relies upon fallacy, assumption and so called leaps of faith. I'm sad I didn't see this challenge earlier.
    There's not really an "original manuscript" AFAIK for Genesis, I think the Sinai manuscript is the oldest text we have from a few centuries after Christ, although the Dead sea Scroll have snippets that are older. We know it was around a lot longer because people quoted and referenced it before then.

    Be that as it may, Gen 1 gives a different order of creation to Gen 2:2, man after animals vs man before animals, also one starts wet and the other starts dry, also man and women created simultaneously vs Man before woman. These are plain contradictions in the first two chapters of the Bible. The last one used to give the rabbis massive headaches until they came up with Lillith, i think they interpreted it as "two creations" or at least "two wives for Adam".

    Of course the Christian response was even more imaginative, when this blatant contradiction (and numerous others) became apparent they refined their exegetical methodology (already used in many religious traditions, eg Egyptians embarrassed by crude early myths about Ra wanking in the river, and Babylonians trying to explain why their gods spoke Sumerian) to invent multiple layers of underlying meaning. Christian exegesis recognises up to five distinct layers of truth in any Biblical verse. This doublethink (quintiplethink?) allows the erotic poetry of the Song of Songs to be reinterpreted as Jesus and his church exchanging non sexual compliments.

    Just been reading an old general survey of the Sumerians and I'd forgotten how much of Genesis looks like a mishmash of repurposed and/or misunderstood Mesopotamian myths. The flood hero Ziusudra, a shepherd dying as a substitute for a farmer (I see parallels to Cain and Abel as well as Abraham and Isaac, not to mention Jesus), forbidden plants in the garden of immortality, and the old pun about Ninti. Her name means "lady of the rib" as she was created to heal Enki's wounded rib (after he ate the eight forbidden plants), but her name also sounds like the word for "lady of life". In Genesis "lady of life" becomes Eve, but there's the rib pun that's lost in translation which remains a confusing part of the story.
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    This shouldn't even be a debate. There is far more than enough scientific evidence to support both old earth and evolution.

    Facts > Belief
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Gen. Chris View Post
    This shouldn't even be a debate. There is far more than enough scientific evidence to support both old earth and evolution.

    Facts > Belief
    Well that's your belief.

    Jatte lambastes Calico Rat

  7. #7

    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Well that's your belief.

    It's not belief that your computer runs on.

    Just sayin'. This one is a no-brainer, if handled right the creationism doesn't stand a chance.

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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    The problem might be that young earth creationism is constructed unfalsifiably, such that all counter arguments are being discarded under the idea that God made everything "as if it had been older" because... erhh, don't try to fathom God's way of reasoning.

    In any case, the Holy Church hereby preemptively condemns any defense of the neoevanglical nonsense called young earth creationism. We don't need arguments for this because we have it first hand from the revelation of John: "And upon the throne sat the lamb and the twelve elders worshipped it and thousand angels blew the trumpets and the lamb said unto them 'I am eternal, why the heck would I confine myself to a couple thousand years and just six days for the whole of creation. No way I am stressing myself that much after the stupid episode on calvary, mate!' And the twelve elders brofisted the lamb and the thousand angels sang 'Right you are, man!'"1

    1Due to God's supertemporality calvary can very well be before genesis. Deal with it.
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    The fact/belief distinction is a pretty recent invention. In reality all knowledge is belief, there's just warranted beliefs and unwarranted beliefs.

    https://www.philosophersmag.com/essa...on-distinction
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Legend View Post
    The fact/belief distinction is a pretty recent invention. In reality all knowledge is belief, there's just warranted beliefs and unwarranted beliefs.

    https://www.philosophersmag.com/essa...on-distinction
    That crap again.

    There are some beliefs that are more than warrated. They're essential, as they create the framework for our thinking. They deserve to be called facts, for simple reason. As they're the source for any reasoning, you need to affirm them in order to scrutinize them, creating an interexting paradox if you try to deny them.

    The basic logic, and its extension, science, are based on them, unlike religious beliefs.

    But we should cut it. We're debating the topic that should be left to challengers.

  11. #11

    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Sar1n View Post
    That crap again.

    There are some beliefs that are more than warrated. They're essential, as they create the framework for our thinking. They deserve to be called facts, for simple reason. As they're the source for any reasoning, you need to affirm them in order to scrutinize them, creating an interexting paradox if you try to deny them.

    The basic logic, and its extension, science, are based on them, unlike religious beliefs.

    But we should cut it. We're debating the topic that should be left to challengers.
    Of course, but these are still beliefs, we just don't require any proof of them, like Aristotle said:

    "Some people expect even this [the law of noncontradiction] to be demonstrated, but on account of lack of education, for it is a lack of education not to know of what one ought to seek a demonstration and of what one ought not. For it is impossible that there be a demonstration of absolutely everything (since one would go on to infinity, so that not even so would there be a demonstration), and if there are certain things of which one ought not to seek a demonstration, these people are not able to say what they think would be of that kind more than would such a principle."

    Since we can't reasonably reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief, then we take some beliefs to be true without proof, and we accept or reject all other beliefs on the basis of these unproven beliefs. Knowledge is all faith, ultimately.
    Last edited by Prodromos; August 09, 2018 at 05:52 PM.
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Legend View Post
    Of course, but these are still beliefs, we just don't require any proof of them, like Aristotle said:

    "Some people expect even this [the law of noncontradiction] to be demonstrated, but on account of lack of education, for it is a lack of education not to know of what one ought to seek a demonstration and of what one ought not. For it is impossible that there be a demonstration of absolutely everything (since one would go on to infinity, so that not even so would there be a demonstration), and if there are certain things of which one ought not to seek a demonstration, these people are not able to say what they think would be of that kind more than would such a principle."

    Since we can't reasonably reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief, then we take some beliefs to be true without proof, and we accept or reject all other beliefs on the basis of these unproven beliefs. Knowledge is all faith, ultimately.
    This kind of rhetoric is what I try to avoid, becuse it inevitably leads to "it's all faith, so religion is equal to science" crap. While a reasonable argument can prove this false, the religious people inevitably fall back to this rhetoric and keep repeating it, and at this point continuing such debate is like playing chess with a pigeon.

    I'd elaborate further, but we need to let the challengers sort this out. This is a commentary thread, not our own challenge.

  13. #13

    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Very well. There's already a thread about this in the EMM, I think. I might bump it. It's an interesting topic.
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Errr, I'm not sure if it's ok for me to post this here, and whether it's inadvertently helping sudden death for eg., but here goes:

    In the early Cambrian Rocks 100 phylum [only 30 living today, phylum is largest category of organism species, genus, family etc. ] Are found in the "lowest" level of rocks called the Cambrian. It is were life first appears in the fossil record. So more diversity of life appears there, than alive today, with no fossils before it at all. No transitional forms for them. There are vast numbers—billions—of fossils of thousands of different species of complex creatures in the Cambrian,—and below it is next to nothing. The vast host of transitional species leading up to the complex Cambrian species are totally missing. Darwin said about the Cambrian explosion I can give no satisfactory answer.
    This section is blatantly wrong. Multicellular life existed before the Cambrian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran

    “The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time ... The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash.”
    -Stephen Jay Gould, “An Asteroid to DieFor,” Discover, October 1989, p. 65.

    Multicellular animals appear suddenly and in rich profusion in the Cambrian, and none are ever found beneath it in the Precambrian
    *Preston Cloud, "Pseudo fossils: A Plea for Caution," in Geology, November 1973, pp. 123-127).
    So these quotes are outdated. The Ediacaran was only ratified in 2004 after unique fossil discoveries in places such as Newfoundland and Australia.

    If evolution were true, than there should be millions of perfect transitional fossils all over the earth. With all the variety of life today, you cannot evolve all life without leaving a trace. There has been many claimed "missing links" but they are usually frauds, faked, or proven wrong shortly after. The difference between the major phylum or even family groups, would leave a clear trail in the fossil record, the only missing links we have,are the ones that are within the family kind. Organisms come into the fossil record sudden and fully formed just as creation would predict. Here are a few quotes from leading evolutionist
    As my Paleontology professor used to say: "Pity the poor paleontologist: most of the rock record just isn't there". There are innumerable reasons why a fossil might not exist for a particular species--the chance of fossilization is so low, for one, and even lower for any animal without hard body parts.
    Last edited by Genghis Skahn; August 13, 2018 at 07:56 PM.

  15. #15

    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    I was hoping this might be interesting. It won't. No really original argument. Everything is ctrl+c ctrl+v from some creationist propaganda site, without trying to understand. All arguments stem from either ignorance or misunderstanding of science or scientific process. And in few cases, blatant lies. Like expecting from evolutionary theory to explain things that are not within its scope, then counting it as argument against evolution.

    In situations like these, it's really hard to control yourself and not jump into debate.
    Last edited by Sar1n; August 13, 2018 at 08:30 PM.

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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    twc01 is copy pasting without giving credit, isn't that a violation of the TOS?

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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    On this quote by twc01 which SD was unfamiliar with.

    “Not even one mutation has been observed that adds a little information to the genome. That surely shows that there are not the millions upon millions of potential mutations the theory demands. There may well not be any. The failure to observe even one mutation that adds information is more than just a failure to find support for the theory. It is evidence against the theory. We have here a serious challenge to neo-Darwinian theory.”
    -Spetner,L. 1997. Not by chance: Shattering the modern theory of evolution.Brooklyn, New York: The Judaica Press
    I found a bit Spetner. He is a Creationist and not trained Biologist of any kind. He is obviously a very good academic with a MIT degree so he can very adroitly construct the a page like this bit I found in the second link below. I am sure his books are just as tightly written but there are two significant problems I see.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Spetner#Career
    https://www.trueorigin.org/spetner3.php

    He is keen to defend what has been variously called Directed or Adaptive mutation. Its been about for a good 4 decades as sort of Neo-Lemarkian addition to the current model of genetic mutation. It has not fared all that well in review and experiments. In fact one of the criticisms is experiments demonstrating it are often not as statistically rigorous as they need to be.

    A paper describing the ideal:

    https://jb.asm.org/content/182/11/2993.short

    Two reviews of the concept and how well it has fared:

    http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/1...%20Mittler.pdf
    http://lenski.mmg.msu.edu/lenski/pdf...&%20Lenski.pdf

    The problem is I think is that he is misusing the older term directed. That direction is not a creator (in the actual scientific work), but simply a Lemakrian direct response to environment. It can be used as the first paper does to describe the very early development of the simplest of cells. The vary fact that ideal is examined and dealt belays the ideal of scientific conspiracies to suppress or hide failures of the current state of evolution and genetics etc. Spetner is sort twisting the concept if you will to make/assert 'directed adaption' as the primary description of genetic alteration. Once at that point you change from environment to add a creator as the director without the problems of random mutation.

    But Spetner in the link I posted is also disingenuous in citing a lot what are TE papers in his bibliography. Transposable elements are a know source of diversity, but they have to develop in some other complex or simple organism before jumping species.

    http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/94/15/7704.full.pdf
    https://student.cc.uoc.gr/uploadFile...ransposons.pdf

    There existence has been known since the 40s and well understood. That existence has no impact on the neo-Darwinism' model. effectively just another vector for random change. From the first "To paraphrase Dobzhansky’s famous phrase, there is good reason to believe that ‘‘Nothing about mobile elements makes sense except in the light of evolution." A selection of TE papers does not really support creationism but it does pad a Bibliography with papers most people won't understand even if they take the time to find and access them.
    Last edited by conon394; September 05, 2018 at 09:24 AM.
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  18. #18

    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    @conon294 Thanks for that helpful information!

    Just letting everyone know that I'm intending to reply, I've just had a really eventful series of months. Hopefully tcw01 is still willing to continue, but I am more than happy to stop if he isn't interested anymore.

  19. #19

    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    In religious subjects there can be no arguments and iron arguments. This is something that must be taken on faith and without a doubt. And all this is personal, and not playful in my opinion.

  20. #20
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    Default Re: The Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

    Quote Originally Posted by Prodromos View Post
    Of course, but these are still beliefs, we just don't require any proof of them, like Aristotle said:

    "Some people expect even this [the law of noncontradiction] to be demonstrated, but on account of lack of education, for it is a lack of education not to know of what one ought to seek a demonstration and of what one ought not. For it is impossible that there be a demonstration of absolutely everything (since one would go on to infinity, so that not even so would there be a demonstration), and if there are certain things of which one ought not to seek a demonstration, these people are not able to say what they think would be of that kind more than would such a principle."

    Since we can't reasonably reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief, then we take some beliefs to be true without proof, and we accept or reject all other beliefs on the basis of these unproven beliefs. Knowledge is all faith, ultimately.

    I draw upon the power of necromancy to breathe unholy life into this topic. Its target may have died, but the discussion has not.

    As someone who does not find creationism plausible, I agree. As convenient as it is to portray facts as static essence of reality, the reality is that facts are as solid as we individually and collectively make them. We could be wrong if we are introduced to new things that appeal to our sense of logic and break the old assumption. We dismiss details that do not fit in or come across as patiently nonsense. We consider our personal belief to be better (or at least, our own with low chance to change) because we have learned to see the world a particular way and we have not been exposed to logic that counters it.

    I would say the problem in this discussion and the issue a rematch should address is this basic divergence in how reality is seen. If a discussion boils down to quoting the Bible and the other party thinks the Bible is hogwash, the issue is automatically something deeper and cannot be resolved except by the parties talking each other into submission. It raises a foundational problem, where true understanding and discourse - or digression - should be achieved by looking at the simplest blocks of logic the other party uses, and attempting to change how those blocks are formed with deeply hitting examples or introducing perspective that forces those blocks to evolve or break to consider a plausible alternative. It is not an argument that can be won with source, facts, even sheer logic itself. Logic is presented by you as you know it. The path to understanding is not to sway the other party with your logic, which may or may not have results. Rather it is to use whatever tool necessary to invoke and challenge their sense of logic. At least as far as a pure persuasion based argument is concerned, not to consider posturing, convincing the mass behind the party who you're arguing, going off to feel good and other behaviors that are the true motivation of much discourse on the internet.

    Don't ask why I bothered to post here and right now, I guess I was bored and didn't want to just passively read things.

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