Science (Evolution) vs Creation Science

[QUOTE="Funky_Llama"] You know, if you're trying to evangelise, it's probably not a good idea to go around calling a group of people liars and fools. It's insulting, it's unpleasant, and it's downright untrue. If I generalised Christians that way, I'd be attacked by you, the rest of the CWU, and everyone else, and quite rightly, too. Lansdowne5

While a secondary aim is to evangelize, the primary aim is simply to present the Truth.

Yes, the Truth's like that, isn't it? Sometimes harsh, but always correct. :) 

Still... if you're so determined to make this unpleasant little 'point'... prove it.

I have a question for you, Lansdowne5, how do you know that the stories in the Bible are really the "Word of God?" Sure, you can say it's the "Truth" if you want, but what validates your claim?

Also, evolution might not be true, but it makes more sense when you take into consideration how old the Earth is and how the natural world as we know it works. And if you plan on saying that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, let me explain to you how scientists find out how old soil is.

Certain isotopes are radioactive in nature, such as Carbon-14. These isotopes are unstable, and radioactively decay at an even and constant rate, at least according to observations based on measurements taken over prolonged lengths of time. Therefore, all isotopes of carbon-14 will decay in exactly the same way. In case you're wondering, when it decays, it slowly disintegrates into protons, electrons, etc.

Knowing this, we can pinpoint the exact age of a carbonaceous material using a mathematic formula; this formula's been proven to be correct by testing the formula on decayed carbon-14 isotopes of which they knew the date already.

Using all this knowledge, scientists have found that the Earth is at least 60,000 years old; there are probably other forms of dating isotopes that go farther back, but I don't feel like looking them up right now.

So, knowing that the Earth is at least 60,000 years old, which contradicts the Bible, how can you say it's completely true?

I have a question for you, Lansdowne5, how do you know that the stories in the Bible are really the "Word of God?" Sure, you can say it's the "Truth" if you want, but what validates your claim?

Also, evolution might not be true, but it makes more sense when you take into consideration how old the Earth is and how the natural world as we know it works. And if you plan on saying that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, let me explain to you how scientists find out how old soil is.

Certain isotopes are radioactive in nature, such as Carbon-14. These isotopes are unstable, and radioactively decay at an even and constant rate, at least according to observations based on measurements taken over prolonged lengths of time. Therefore, all isotopes of carbon-14 will decay in exactly the same way. In case you're wondering, when it decays, it slowly disintegrates into protons, electrons, etc.

Knowing this, we can pinpoint the exact age of a carbonaceous material using a mathematic formula; this formula's been proven to be correct by testing the formula on decayed carbon-14 isotopes of which they knew the date already.

Using all this knowledge, scientists have found that the Earth is at least 60,000 years old; there are probably other forms of dating isotopes that go farther back, but I don't feel like looking them up right now.

So, knowing that the Earth is at least 60,000 years old, which contradicts the Bible, how can you say it's completely true?

Strategist1117

You can add Uranium-238, which has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years :P  And Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years.  But you must ask yourself this: does Carbon-14, or any other material that has a half-life, start off pristine, and remains uncontaminated for the entire lenght of its half-life?  Now then, I'm going to present a shocker to you all.  Creationists and proponents of a young earth do believe in evolution.  They just don't believe that enough mutations and time will result in one species changing into another kind.  

[QUOTE="Strategist1117"]I see that a few of you seem to believe in Creationism. What's the basis for your belief?Lansdowne5

I'm a Christian, therefore I believe that Jesus was, and is the Son of God and that the Bible is God's Inspired Word written under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Because I believe that God's Word is infallible, I believe that the gospels and all other books are 100% accurate and correct. Jesus confirmed the Creation story told in Genesis, and seeing as I have no reason (other than outside, fallible sources) to doubt the original Genesis account, I believe it is correct. 

That's my basis. :) 

sorry for hijacking the thread but that brings me to a question that has always interested me:

why aren't all the gospels writen about jesus in the new testament? Why were some left out after the concil on nicea (iirc)? Who the hell were the people there to judge if some text was inspired by god and others weren't?

Evolution being equated with atheism is absurd as physics being equated with atheism.

--- 

One of the recurring themes in Newton's discussions of his predecessors' and interlocutors' strategies in natural philosophy — especially those of Descartes and Leibniz — is the question of the proper role of "hypotheses" in systematic enquiries into nature (see Cohen 1966). Indeed, one of Newton's most famous pronouncements in thePrincipia is: hypotheses non fingo, that is, "I feign no hypotheses." This phrase, which was added to the second edition of the text, is sometimes taken to mean that Newton eschews all hypothetical reasoning in natural philosophy.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-philosophy/#HypNonFin 

Does this make modern physics atheistic because Newton, a theist, based his reasoning on naturalism, the equivilant of atheism? No, it does not. Likewise, the same is true with evolution.

This is very interesting, draw from it what you will -  

"Collin Patterson, a senior paleontologist [evolutionist] from the British Natural History Museum, on November 5, 1981, in a lecture given at the American Museum of Natural History, before an audience made up of American scientists, all evolutionists, asked: 

"Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing...that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of the Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said 'I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school."

The audience remained silent...18 years have gone by and Patterson's disturbing question remains unanswered. Not even a Nobel Prize in Biology has answered his question up to now... By the way, do you know or have heard of any Nobel Prize winner who has advanced the scientific status of evolutionism? Collin Patterson, pressed by the Scientific Nomenklatura has softened a little on his criticisms against neo-Darwinism, and later on tried to explain the inexplicability of his famous question. Why? Was it from fear of losing his academic reputation and office at the British Natural History Museum in London? If so, isn't it a very different attitude from Galileo who dared to go against the Academia of his time?"

Source: http://www.rae.org/sci-ideo.html

sorry for hijacking the thread but that brings me to a question that has always interested me:

why aren't all the gospels writen about jesus in the new testament? Why were some left out after the concil on nicea (iirc)? Who the hell were the people there to judge if some text was inspired by god and others weren't?

Enosh88

Because the texts that were left out were considered heretical and false. The council of Nicea mostly agreed upon what was hertical, and what was not. They formed a bible that corresponded most wth their beleif, not what was absolutely the oppostite. Gospel of Judas anyone?

No one knows anything about evolution.  Bollocks.  This is pure creationist propaganda at its worst.  You cannot possibly believe this.

I post on another forum and here is my response I gave a while back when someone told me he didn't understand evolution.  I have reproduced it here but due to this site being HTML nazis I am presenting it in picture format to get around whatever it thinks is wrong with the code.

Lansdowne: Google 'patterson misquoted'.Funky_Llama

What I posted isn't a misquote. The only links I can find on Google are to do with Creationists misquoting what he said about trasitional fossils. :)

[QUOTE="Funky_Llama"]Lansdowne: Google 'patterson misquoted'.Lansdowne5

What I posted isn't a misquote. The only links I can find on Google are to do with Creationists misquoting what he said about trasitional fossils. :)

Science rejects the concept of truth and uses theories as merely instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. In other words, gravity, evolution, special relativity, and other theories are just explanations of the world, not "truths" are necessarily true, or at least in regards to how precisely it happens.

You know what, Lan, I could just totally rip apart your whole argument, like many others in this thread has.

But I see it is pointless.

How can you debate somebody who will not change his mind no matter what evidence you present in front of him?

Science rejects the concept of truth and uses theories as merely instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. In other words, gravity, evolution, special relativity, and other theories are just explanations of the world, not "truths" are necessarily true, or at least in regards to how precisely it happens.

Genetic_Code

And if those explanations aren't the truth, or at least close to it, what is?

[QUOTE="Genetic_Code"]

Science rejects the concept of truth and uses theories as merely instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. In other words, gravity, evolution, special relativity, and other theories are just explanations of the world, not "truths" are necessarily true, or at least in regards to how precisely it happens.

Strategist1117

Please enlighten our heathen minds, what exactly is this "truth" you keep speaking of? Define it for us.

And if those explanations aren't the truth, or at least close to it, what is?

Strategist1117

I think this article says it best: "truth in science is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow".

Also, here's an example of scientific analysis changing in response to global warming concerns.