Subject:    | A Question For The Creationists
Date:       | 11 May 2007
Message-ID: | 1178885582.649990.290270@e51g2000hsg.googlegroups.com

Mark Nutter wrote:
>> If atheism (absence of belief in God) is to be classified as a religion,
>> then good health (absence of disease) should be classified as a disease.
>> Buddhism is not made religious by the fact that it is atheistic; it's
>> religiosity is determined by its other qualities.

Ouachita wrote:
> Not a logical comparison there. If a rejection of the concept of deity were
> not at issue there would be no such thing as an atheist.

Mark Nutter wrote:
That's irrelevant. Theist and atheist are simply labels for one's view on the existence of god(s), they are not the names of religions. Atheist is not a religion for the same reason that theist is not a religion. If I tell you someone is a theist, does that mean they are a Christian? A Mormon? A Muslim? A Hindu? A worshipper of Zeus, Thor, Astarte, Baal, Cthulu, etc? Theism/atheism simply describes one's attitude towards one idea. That's not enough to constitute a full- blown religion.

Ouachita wrote:
>>> Atheism attempts to explain origins via "science" called "Darwinism".

Mark Nutter wrote:
>> That's true only in the same sense that atheism attempts to achieve good
>> nutrition by eating healthy foods, or that atheism attempts to construct
>> durable buildings by using sound engineering principles. There's nothing
>> inherent in atheism that demands an evolutionary explanation for life's
>> origins; atheists merely accept evolution on the grounds that it happens to
>> be the view that is most consistent with the verifiable facts.

Ouachita wrote:
> Sorry, but evolution is a very compatible belief among atheists

Mark Nutter wrote:
So? The theory of gravity is also very compatible with atheism, as are the theory that sex has something to do with pregnancy, the theory that lightning is caused by accumulation of electrical charges in the atmosphere, and the theory that germs and viruses cause diseases. Granted, there are theistic alternatives to each of the above, such as the belief that a fertility god(dess) grants or withholds pregnancy, the belief that lightning is a weapon of divine retribution, and the belief that diseases are a judgment sent by God on those who have displeased Him. That doesn't mean that because atheism is compatible with the scientific explanations, therefore the scientific explanations are somehow promoting atheism. It's not reality's fault if it happens to be consistent with what atheists believe!

Ouachita wrote:
> I would venture to guess most atheists couldn't list 2 verifiable facts yet
> say they believe in evolution.

Mark Nutter wrote:
Ok, since you want me to keep it under two, I'll only give you one. ;)

Quick review: Science is based on the principle that truth is consistent with itself. Knowing some facts (i.e. the individual pieces of truth) allows you to discover other facts that are consistent with what you already know.

In practice, you can discover new truth as follows: describe a process in enough detail that you can reliably predict what real-world consequences would result from that process actually operating, then look in the real world to see if those consequences are actually present. If they are, then your explanation is consistent with the evidence; if they're not, then your explanation is inconsistent with the evidence. Note that if your explanation is not consistent with the evidence, you can always invent new unsubstantiated claims in order to try and excuse the inconsistency, but this is called "rationalization," and is merely a sign that your original theory was not consistent with the facts.

Now, Darwin's theory states that new species arise by descent with variations from a common ancestor. If this process were to take place in the real world, there are some real-world consequences which would result. For example, the descendant species would receive a copy of the DNA of the ancestral species, plus or minus a few variations. This means that different descendant species would share large chunks of DNA in common, including genetic defects and nonfunctional segments, above and beyond the commonality that would be required merely to produce similarities in form and function.

When we look at the gene sequences in different species, we find exactly that: large areas of common DNA, in nested hierarchies such as would be produced by common descent with variation. Thus we say that evolution is consistent with the evidence provided by DNA.

Let's try the scientific process with creationism. Assume that the creationist interpretation of Genesis is literally true. What real world consequences would this have? Several:

C1. All species that ever existed would have come into existence in the same 6 day period at the beginning of life on earth.
C2. All fossils would have been created during the 1-year global Flood.
C3. Only one species of each created "kind" would exist today, since the others all died in the flood.

Do we see this pattern in the real world today? Is there only one species of the "cat" kind, and one species of the "pig" kind, and one species of the "canine" kind? No, we don't. Creationism is not consistent with the evidence. Of course, as I mentioned before, we can always invent new, unsubstantiated rationalizations for why the evidence is not consistent with creationism. We could suppose, for example, that God created a whole new bunch of species after the flood--species that for some strange reason had the shared genetic defects, in exactly the same pattern of inheritance, as would have resulted from common descent. This, of course, would contradict C1, above, since it would mean most species alive today had been created in defective form after the Flood instead of during Creation.

Or we could suppose that God allowed the kinds to evolve new species (*very* rapidly!) immediately after the Flood in order to replace the species that were lost. But if that's the case, then Darwin was right and new species *do* arise by descent with modification from common ancestors. Or we could suppose that each species is its own "kind," in which case the ark would have needed to be much bigger. And so on. But in any case, the evolutionary explanation is going to be superior to the creationist explanation, because the creationist explanation needs to invent rationalizations to explain its inconsistency with the evidence, whereas evolution is consistent with the evidence "out of the box," so to speak.

Mark Nutter wrote:
>> Refusal to look at the evidence is not the same as the evidence not
>> existing.

Ouachita wrote:
> If there was actual evidence acceptable in the truest sense of science there
> would be no more argument.

Mark Nutter wrote:
That's an interesting argument, especially considering how much more cogent it is to Christianity than to evolution. Evolution is a scientific topic, and many people lack the interest and educational background to fully appreciate the nature and value of the evidence. Not so with Christianity, however.

Christianity claims that there exists a God so loving and so powerful that He was willing and able to become one of us, dwell among us, and give His life for us, in order that He and we might share a personal, face-to-face relationship together for all eternity. The most fundamental and obvious consequence of such a thing being true would be that God would show up on at least a regular basis to participate in that relationship with each of us which He worked so hard to make possible. If that were true, however, then atheism could not exist, because God's constant appearances in the real world and in direct, personal, face-to-face relationships with each of us, would make denying His existence as silly as denying the existence of the planet Earth.

The existence of atheism, and the existence of any debate about the existence of the Christian God, are themselves evidence of this God's non-existence, since no such debate would be possible if such a God really existed and was willing and able to behave as though He believed what Christians claim about Him.

Likewise, creationism is evidence of God's non-existence in the real world, since if God showed up in the real world today, as though He really loved us and wanted genuine, personal, two-way interaction with us, then believers would have no need to turn to the ancient past looking for some technical ambiguity they could exploit as "evidence" for God's existence. The whole talk.origins group would be a moot point if God would simply show up and behave as though He believed the Gospel. Thus, the creation-evolution debate is proof of the absence of any real-world evidence for the Christian God.

Ouachita wrote:
> I took a long look at as much "evidence" as I could find. I also brought
> problems upon myself in college for daring to question things that should be
> subjected to questioning. You accept the widely accepted belief system or go
> outside the circle.

Mark Nutter wrote:
Yeah, been there, done that. I learned evolution in high school, then accepted Christ and went to a conservative, evangelical Christian college and "discovered" creationism (Henry Morris, John C. Whitcomb, Duane Gish, etc). I studied everything the creationists were saying about evolution, and all the quotes they quoted from evolutionists, and concluded that evolution was a religion, a belief system, rooted in godlessness and contrary to sound science. But I took it a step further. I went to the first-hand sources and learned what the evolutionists were actually saying.

The evolutionists (including the theistic evolutionists) are telling the truth about evolution. You would do well to pay attention to them, and to not let yourself be led astray by narrow-minded creationists. Giving species the ability to adapt to changing conditions is a wise and well-engineered design; a Creator would have to be fairly stupid (for a creator) to handicap His creatures with an inflexible genetic system that would guarantee their extinction as soon as the climate changed or the competition heated up. So how smart is your God really?

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