Creation-Evolution-Creative Days-Age of the Earth-Humanoid Fossils-Great Flood

[TrueTomHarley 4,237]

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

I do not believe that other "thinking " creatures equal to humans exist.  The bible tells us about angels and demons and humans who can understand "morality".  

I can life with the thought that they could, other areas in which the Creator planted life. What of the verses that such-and-such is being played out before all creation? Possibly that is relatively speaking, just as “in all the inhabited earth” can mean all the earth they knew about at the time. 

It is speculation of no practical significance. If we ever did contact any aliens, they would say, “Mind your own business! Straighten up your own act before you try to export your plague-like thinking elsewhere!”

[Arauna 1,676]

On 1/9/2021 at 9:40 PM, Srecko Sostar said:

many other people of his time lived together with dinosaurs, tyrannosaurus and many other prehistorical animals?? 

If you believe all the claptrap about the dinosaurs the "scientists spin. 

We have been here before on this forum - how the earth was much different before the flood..... etc.  If you did not learn anything then .... I will once again  be talking into the wind......  I have better things to do with my time,

 

[AlanF 334]

9 minutes ago, Arauna said:

If you believe all the claptrap about the dinosaurs the "scientists spin. 

We have been here before on this forum - how the earth was much different before the flood..... etc.  If you did not learn anything then .... I will once again  be talking into the wind......  I have better things to do with my time,

 

LOL at the abysmal ignorance.

[AlanF 334]

True Tom Harley said:

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On 1/6/2021 at 6:47 AM, Arauna said:

Apart from this - the math does not add up and I will not even go into the protein and nano-technology aspects which prove evolution a myth or a religion

 

It's quite clear that Arauna has no more understanding of such things than she does of the Watchtower's history of using Young-Earth Creationism to 'defend' the Bible.

"The math does not add up"?? LOL! Arauna is probably not capable of calculating the probability of getting heads in a fair coin toss.

As for TTH's claims:

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When I mentioned to Alan that various mathematicians had ruled anything other than micro evolution undoable based on probability alone, he responded: “LOL! Those mathematicians are almost ALL creationists...”

Point being that they all must take an oath to support all aspects of the religions that support their Creationism.

Note that this Creationism is rooted in the same religious philosophy that gives rise to a variety of teachings that the Watchtower Society rejects: Trinitarianism, hellfire, immortality of the soul, all good people go to heaven, etc. The Young-Earth variety also requires belief that the universe was created 6,000-10,000 years ago in six literal days, 

Furthermore, as I've repeatedly shown, the Watchtower Society has explicitly rejected Young-Earth Creationism as unscientific and unscriptural. Note, in the following excerpts from Watchtower publications, that the Society has wrongly equated "creationism" with "young-earth creationism":

The Watchtower, April 1, 1986, pp. 12-13:

<< In recent times, some fundamentalist religions have put forward creationism as the answer to evolution. But in doing so, they make a claim that is both unscriptural and unbelievable. It is that the heavens, the earth, and everything on the earth were created by God in 6 days of 24 hours each—yes, in just 144 literal hours! This teaching has caused many to ridicule the Bible. >>

Awake! March 8, 1983, pp. 14-15, commenting on the 1981-1982 "scientific creationism" trial in Little Rock, Arkansas:

<< Their teaching that the earth and even the universe are less than 10,000 years old contradicts all the findings of modern science. They are so far out of step that they invite ridicule from scientists. . . The time to build mountains and wear them down is measured in millions of years. For continents to drift apart and form oceans takes hundreds of millions of years. To say that all of this goes back only 10,000 years is simply absurd in the eyes of geologists. . . Physicists also protest that it is impossible to squeeze their studies into a time span of a mere 10,000 years. They point to radioactive elements like uranium and thorium that have lives measured in billions of years. The accumulation of distinctive isotopes of lead, which are the end products of radioactive decay, shows that some of the oldest rocks in the earth’s crust must have lain undisturbed for as much as 3 or 4 billion years. . . 

Trying to defend their arbitrary structure of “creation science” with such weak, strained hypotheses, they were soundly rebutted by the scientists’ testimony at Little Rock. They were left without any credible claim to being scientific.

Creationism Discredited

. . . Based on the testimony given, both by the challengers and the defenders of the law, the judge could hardly do otherwise than find that creationism is not scientific. It was clearly exposed that its proponents do not arrive at conclusions by the scientific method of gathering all the evidence and then fitting it to a hypothesis. Instead, they start with a fixed sectarian interpretation of Genesis and seek evidence to support that. Contrary evidence they try to ignore, or, when they cannot, they invent unlikely explanations for the evident conflict with hard facts. >>

Awake! March 22, 1983, pp. 13-14, commenting further on the Little Rock Trial:

<< Creationist Doctrines Not Biblical

But does the legal defeat of scientific creationism, as this movement is known, reflect unfavorably on the Bible? Are the doctrines of recent creation and a diluvial origin of geologic strata found in God’s Word?
An informed Bible student would answer, No. . . The Bible says nothing at all about the formation of sedimentary layers, whether at the time of the Flood or earlier. All the voluminous writings of creationists on this subject, which came under critical examination in the trial, have been motivated by the desire to reconcile the existence of the geologic column and its fossils, dinosaurs and all, with their claim for a 6- to 10-thousand-year age of the earth. >>

Obviously Arauna, and apparently TTH, reject the Society's opinion that Young-Earth Creationism is an unscriptural and unscientific religious doctrine.

Next note how TTH thinks that he is able to understand how Creationist 'scientists and mathematicians' can "calculate all that is involved". Of course, he cannot say what is involved in "all that is involved". Why? Because neither he nor his favored "creation scientists" have the faintest idea.

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Of course! The masters of that joined-at-the-hip branch of science, mathematicians, calculate all that is involved and declare the odds against it happening greater than all the atoms in the universe!

So there are some sort of "odds" against "it" happening? What is "it"? Again, TTH and his sources cannot say.

The fact is that Creationists have made such bogus claims for a long time, but have been burned so badly that most of them do not even try anymore.

The simple fact is that calculating the odds of nearly everything having to do with the origin of life or of evolution is impossible. The only thing that can be done is to set up an extremely narrowly defined calculation and try one's hand at that. But in practice, the Creationists who have done so invariably set up a straw man that no proper scientist has espoused.

For example, how does one calculate the odds of a very simple protein molecule forming "by chance"? The simple-minded calculations that Creationists used to do assumed that, in some unspecified manner, a bunch of atoms just sort of collide and stick together and form the protein molecule, sort of like picking jelly beans out of a bag and hoping that they come out in a pre-specified order. But this shows a gross misunderstanding of physical chemistry.

And of course, neither of our two Einsteins here can cite a single example of their favorite Creationist sources actually doing such calculations. The most they cite is someone saying, "it's very, very, very improbable!"

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Freed from this inconvenient truth, the evolution proponent continue merrily to build their castles in the sky.

This is a good example of how ignorant TTH is about what the Theory of Evolution means. It does NOT mean "soup to nuts evolution of the entire universe from nothing". It does NOT mean "the origin of life" followed by "the evolution of life by natural selection and other mechanisms". It means the latter, ONLY.

Thus, any purported calculations about the improbability of "the origin of life" by natural means miss the boat entirely. Such are nothing more than great big straw men, since no proper scientists claim that they understand such an origin. On the contrary, most scientists who say anything at all plainly acknowledge that they really have no idea of the actual origin of life.

But believers in the Bible God have a much bigger problem: they cannot explain the origin of their God. If their reasoning that "something cannot come from nothing" is valid, then they've clobbered their reasoning about God. And of course, claiming that "God has always existed" is mere special pleading, of the same significance as claiming that the universe in some manner has always existed.

The rest of TTH's exposition is mere ranting against his straw men, and I won't comment.

[TrueTomHarley 4,237]

2 hours ago, AlanF said:

LOL at the abysmal ignorance.

 

7 minutes ago, AlanF said:

This is a good example of how ignorant TTH is

The return on His Odiousness.

After a two day absence, I was getting worried. The secret to any good Western is to have a villain, and in Alan one finds a villain to make The Magnificent Seven look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir 

[AlanF 334]

11 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

 

The return on His Odiousness.

After a two day absence, I was getting worried. The secret to any good Western is to have a villain, and in Alan one finds a villain to make The Magnificent Seven look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir 

I've given you two morons an opportunity to redeem yourselves. Let's see if you can manage something.

[Srecko Sostar 1,801]

36 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Awake! March 8, 1983, pp. 14-15, commenting on the 1981-1982 "scientific creationism" trial in Little Rock, Arkansas:

<< Their teaching that the earth and even the universe are less than 10,000 years old contradicts all the findings of modern science. They are so far out of step that they invite ridicule from scientists. . . The time to build mountains and wear them down is measured in millions of years. For continents to drift apart and form oceans takes hundreds of millions of years. To say that all of this goes back only 10,000 years is simply absurd in the eyes of geologists. . .

Didn't Arauna comment that the Supercontinent (Pangea) disintegrated in the Flood? And how new configuration of land with highest mountains are built?

[AlanF 334]

11 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Didn't Arauna comment that the Supercontinent (Pangea) disintegrated in the Flood? And how new configuration of land with highest mountains are built?

Yes. That's why she's a complete moron, out of touch even with 40-year-old Watchtower "new light".

[TrueTomHarley 4,237]

3 hours ago, AlanF said:

Let's see if you can manage something.

Did you know?...

92% of the world’s atheist evolutionists play drums.

But they will only do Also Sprach Zarathustra 

[AlanF 334]

34 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Did you know?...

92% of the world’s atheist evolutionists play drums.

But they will only do Also Sprach Zarathustra 

About what I expected -- zero content.

[TrueTomHarley 4,237]

14 hours ago, AlanF said:

Note, in the following excerpts from Watchtower publications, that the Society has wrongly equated "creationism" with "young-earth creationism":

Why you think they should strive to capture the nuances of what both you and they think is faulty is beyond me.

14 hours ago, AlanF said:

But believers in the Bible God have a much bigger problem: they cannot explain the origin of their God.

They’ll live.

[TrueTomHarley 4,237]

Notwithstanding quirks as Michael Shermer’s forsaking his own ad hominem attack ban to indicate by voice intonation that those who oppose him are nuts, I overall appreciated very much his Skepticism 101: How to Think like a Scientist. I learned a lot as to how they think and I came to find I agreed with Shermer in many things. Alas, skepticism, when it becomes a movement, is like all new trends of the world. What might work if it was to try to integrate itself into the overall pattern rather than take over fails when in opts for the later goal. Overall, a measure of skepticism is a good thing. But it is also covered by verses such as ‘does not the palate test out words?’ ‘a fool believes every word, but the wise one considers his steps,’ and so forth.

When skepticism imagines itself the be-all and end-all, then what could be beneficial becomes a way to stifle discovery. It throws the baby out with the bathwater in its presumption to be THE answer to life. 

It reminds me of my friend Bud, who fixed many a clunker for me back in the day. An old-school mechanic, he was disdainful of the then newfangled electronic diagnosis methods. He told me of the younger guys of the shop stymied when such methods told them there was nothing wrong with a certain car. “Well,there must be something wrong with it,” he said, “It doesn’t run.”

Shermer’s lecture of evolution vs creationism was fascinating as it laid out four distinct battles (in the U.S) of the “war:” the Scopes trial of 1925, the later battle that Genesis be given equal time with evolution, the next battle to declare creation a science, and give it equal time on that basis, and finally the stage of “intelligent creation,” which makes no mention of religion at all (but whose proponents almost always believe in the God of Abraham, Shermer says, no doubt in violation of another one of his rules of thinking that one’s religion is relevant to the merits of whatever ideas he brings to the table). I agree with Shermer that “creation science” is not science, and said it here on JWI’s 607 thread:

“It’s not, and we shouldn’t argue that it is. That does not mean that it is not reasonable. It is eminently reasonable, and the fact that science has not endorsed it says more about the limitations of science than it does about creation. Furthermore, whatever Shermer may do in his private capacity, in his public capacity as Great Courses lecturer, he acknowledges that there are some places that science is not equipped to go, and therefore he passes no judgment on those places. What we should be arguing is not that our beliefs are scientific, but that science is a flawed system for measuring existence. In some areas it works pretty well; in others it comes up empty handed. When it attempts to encroach on what Shermer says it is not equipped to encroach, it becomes an overall obstacle to gaining insight and @Araunais right—it becomes a false god and those who follow it where it has no authority become it’s “clergy.”

Shermer’s contention that creation science is not science, upheld by the U.S Supreme Court in 1987, gives me renewed respect and some insight into the reasoning of the WTS, who at least since that time have not said that it is. Instead, we have become accustomed to reading such things as “the Bible is not a book of science, but it is in harmony with true science.” Materialists will choke at this phrasing, for they assume that ALL science is true, and if it is not there is no other way to correct the problem than a further advance of science. But the WT’s phrasing is in accord with the truth that not everything is examined physically; some things are examined spiritually, and when science encroaches on that field where it has but clumsy and inapplicable tools, it is apt to come up with something other than “true science.”

I’ve previously coined a category of materialists with the acronym SPCA—“science/philosophers/cheerleader/atheists.” These are not the same as scientists though there is overlap. Scientists just go about doing science. Michael Shermer acknowledges that many scientists believe in God, no doubt because they sense there are limitations to science. But SPCAs assume human science is all there is and ram it down everyone’s throat as the be-all and end-all.

It is also worth noting that the Bible never speaks of proving faith in a scientific way. Instead it speaks of “taste and see that Jehovah is good.” Can you really prove that something tastes good? Plainly it is subjective. It will appeal to some hearts and not others.