The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Evolution, The Flood, and God’s True Nature

OK, if young-earth creationism does not shy away from scientific fields of study, then it should be subject to the same rigors as scientific fields in testing hypotheses. Scientific fields use the hypothetico-deductive method to advance knowledge. A key part of this method is testing hypotheses. But to be scientific, these hypotheses must be capable of being shown false. That is, there must be some possible empirical observation that could show such hypotheses to be false. For example, consider the following syllogism that represents a testable scientific hypothesis.

Premise 1: If evolution does not occur, bacteria exposed to antibiotics will not adapt to survive.
Premise 2: Bacteria exposed to antibiotics do adapt to survive in the presence of antibiotics.
Conclusion: Evolution occurs.

Now it is possible that bacteria would not adapt to the presence of antibiotics. Thus, the hypothesis could be falsified, and in some cases, it actually is falsified, especially in the case of our most advanced antibiotics that seem to kill all bacteria at the present time. But as it turns out, in many cases, the hypothesis is actually supported, leading to the conclusion that evolution of bacterial resistance occurs, much to the dismay of medical authorities attempting to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

That criterion of falsifiability then should be applicable to young-earth creationism if young-earth creationism is to be considered on a par with scientific fields of study.

Can you give an example of a falsifiable hypothesis generated by young-earth creationism?

How about this Scientific American article?:

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Actually, there are many answers - to your question. I just need to enter the right keywords into Google - to answer your question.

I don’t see belief in a young earth creation…vs an earth creation (with science bringing in an old earth, big bang, and evolution) - as a show stopper - THEOLOGICALLY. Both sides can be presented and yet KEEP Biblical inerrancy.

What??? I don’t understand your post.

First, your post needs editing. I, lancia, asked the question, not Hermano, and I asked it of him. Second, the question I asked is not answered by the linked article. The linked article supports my contention. Third, if there are many answers to my question, list one.

Hi Lancia,

In response to your comment, as I contended in an earlier comment above,

All alternatives to creationism are equally unfalsifiable. The scientific method cannot test the past.

Also, creationists don’t deny microevolution. In my original post in this thread, I pointed out,

Blessings.

Lancia. I’m trying to help you, by pointing to an article. It doesn’t necessarily address a specific question. But gives rebuttal - to Hermano’s general position. I think we are on the same side - mind you. :laughing:

Let’s say we are - more or less - on the same side, going forward. And leave my questionable answer behind. Where my position is Old Earth, Big Bang, and possible evolution…all within the context of Biblical inerrancy.

It could be, I’m trying to pick up how Japanese and Mandarin sound - as I answer these posts. Or I’m playing, the wrong background music. :laughing:

Well, I’m back on track now. With the right background music. Look out, Hermano. :laughing:

Even scientists in white lab coats of infallibility do not live in a spiritual vacuum. In this same vein of discussion re. scientific consensus and hypothesis testing:

Climate change–**is global warming clearly proven? **

If so, is it beyond doubt that it is man-made? That it is a crisis of epic proportions? That any skeptics are either ignorant, or are rejecting the facts because of their blind fanaticism? That any dissenting scientists are, in reality, unqualified pseudo-scientists standing against irrefutable evidence and solid consensus?

Also, are there any possible ulterior motives held by promoters of “the crisis of man-made global warming”? Any secret agenda? (Like, say, the spread of socialism?)

If so, could there be a ***spiritual dimension ***to that agenda? (After all, as a prophecy futurist, I believe there will indeed be a literal Antichrist, and a world-wide unity under his leadership—with dire consequences to dissenters.)

As qaz knows, I believe in conspiracies. I have previously linked to Kevin Miller’s must-see movie, Expelled, which supports Intelligent Design, and exposes a conspiracy against I.D. in academia.

(However, I do not buy into all conspiracy theories: for example, I think Elvis is dead. And I believe man really walked on the moon. In fact, I had the privilege of getting to know Col. Jim Irwin, the eighth man to walk on the moon. In 1989 he was visiting Guadalajara on a speaking tour, and my wife organized his stay, and his speaking engagements here. Irwin was a scientist, a devout Christian…and a young earth creationist :astonished: .)

But for me, the biggest conspiracy of all, is that there really is a devil ("the god of this world" 2 Cor. 4:4) who has blinded the minds of unbelievers to both his own existence, as well as to the existence of an exclusively loving God.

Blessings.

Which is what I’m also pointing out to people. Tthe tribulation could occur in MANY WAYS. And different folks, with the alleged gift of prophecy, could be seeing the Zombie Apocalypse - you just never know. And the devil is the chief culprit - behind it. :angry:

The origin of life is not (and need not be) addressed by evolution. No matter how life originated, evolution would address its development after that point.

I disagree. Falsifiable predictions about the fossil record can be raised. For example, given the expected appearances and durations of existence of organisms, one would predict that fossils of humans and long-extinct organisms like trilobites or that fossils of modern birds and ancient pterodactyls would not be found in the same geological strata. So, one could test such a falsifiable hypothesis by looking at strata in different regions of the world for empirical evidence.

The scientific record is used to test the past in many fields. One simple example is the study of pollen cores in the sediments of lakes to understand the climates of the past. Different climates produce different plant species with different pollen morphology. The depth of the pollen found in the cores tells us how relatively long ago particular plants species lived and so tells us something about the climate at that time.

Any particular individual of whatever kind that was created must indeed have been a species of some sort. Are you saying a kind may be more than one species? If that’s the case, you would be saying that a kind that was specially created was represented by a number of different individuals of a number of different related species.

Consider the insect order Coleoptera or the beetles. There are about 400,000 species of beetles known worldwide. Did that order start with one species? if that’s the case, then the rate of speciation of new beetles from that one original beetle species is astronomically high, far surpassing what is conceivable. Even if the order started with a few species, it’s still practically impossible to imagine, given the time frame that creationists envision. Or even worse, did the order start just with a species of the entire insect class Insecta, from which all of the insects, including beetles, evolved in the time creationists say was available?

That’s part of the ambiguity and incoherence I see in creationism, which is why falsifiable hypotheses about creationism are not likely to be formulated.

As I said, the first part of your statement is not relevant to evolution. How life originated has been addressed by other areas of science, not evolution. But the development of different taxonomic groups from earlier ones is an area that is and has been studied by evolution, replete with falsifiable hypotheses. For example, we see hypotheses about the time of divergence of taxonomic groups, which can be tested by comparing the fossil record with genetic differences that have accumulated over time between the groups.

BTW, this is off topic, but because Randy love’s Zombies so much and people some people here hate them and are horrified by them, I thought I’d chime in.

“desensitization” is a good thing, in most cases. Christianity (the version I grew up in) taught me it was bad. It isn’t bad at all, which is why therapy uses it “ERP” to get people over their phobias and OCD symptoms. We, in the west, are not desensitized in many ways to many things that other people around the globe think is “no big deal”. An example of desensitizing: The thought of watching someone butcher a deer is barbarous to me. Why would that be? Because I have never witnessed it. So, could I then imply that a butcher is an immoral person just because I am sensitized to it? By no means. Should my life depend on it, and I had to learn how to butcher an animal, after a few times of doing it would be “nothing” to make note of. Not gross, not anything. It just is.

Parents see their children die in the third world. They move on with life. People in the west are destroyed when it happens, often they shutdown for the rest of their lives, because it is rare. Not something we see happen to other people (often) and so we are very, very sensitive to it.

Clothing is another example. Muslims are very sensitized towards women showing flesh, so they cover them up completely. If a women shows part of her ankle, the men in that culture can’t stop lusting after it, because it isn’t proper! Meanwhile, most men see women on the beach or in their workout clothes and thinking nothing of it. We have desensitized ourselves to it. If we didn’t, then people would literally go insane.

Desensitization protects us in most cases. I suppose it could be misused, but that is the nature of everything.

Zombies creep people out because they are scared of death, they fear gross and ugly things. I’d suggest people look at it more to get over it, because people do live in this world that look pretty close to some of those zombies and I think your inability to look at them without horror would be very hurtful to them. Just some food for thought. Look up ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) that many psychologists use, you may ultimately see how it is good thing and that shying away from scary things just makes them more scary.

I’m still not clear: is Randy trying to warn us about a forthcoming Zombie Apocalypse? Or is he actually trying to desensitize us to it :question:

I can’t speak for Randy. All I am saying is for us to look at why Zombies might scare/offend us. Is it because we are uncomfortable with ugly, rotting things or death, or maybe both?

Lancia, for your consideration, here is a very short essay titled, The Myth of Falsifiability,” by John F. McGowan, a NASA research engineer, and physics Ph.D.

Also, regarding the question of rapid speciation, required by the YEC model,

From my limited understanding, according to the young-earth model, rapid speciation would have been triggered by environmental pressure working on small, isolated populations. After the Flood, the earth experienced many years, even centuries, of residual catastrophism. Changes occurred through recombination of existing genes in the rich genomes of the “kinds,” not mutations as evolution requires.

A couple of articles on this question, substantiating rapid speciation:

-Getting Enough Genetic Diversity: How Species Arose After the Ark, by Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson.
-Darwin’s finches: Evidence supporting rapid post-Flood adaptation, by Carl Wieland.

Blessings.

:laughing: lol… I’ve been looking at Randy’s zombies for ages now and I’m well and truly “over it” — NOT because of any latent fear but because I think they’re stupid. But I understood such works for Randy so I just look for his salient points while I sail right past his weird little friends… :laughing:

I’m all for a laugh but after a while it’s just variations of the same message — but I guess according to our own particular bents we all (OR at least I’ll own mine) do the same thing. Maybe I’m just jealous because I can’t put pictures to my idiosyncrasies. :mrgreen:

I agree with some of that paper’s conclusions. But there is nothing there that is surprising. When a hypothesis is tested, especially in the case of complex ones, the hypothesis itself is rarely directly testable. Instead a testable prediction is deduced from it. In essence what one does it this: If H is true, then so is I, where H is the complex hypothesis and I is the testable (in theory) prediction. This gives us the first step in the following test in syllogism form.

Premise 1: IF H is true, then so is I.

But as is almost always the case in complex hypotheses, the deduction of I from H is never an easy step. The deduction is not clean and usually introduces a number of hidden assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses, A1 and A2 for example, so the premise actually looks more like this.

Premise 1: If H, A1, and A2 are true, so is I.

So, then when I is tested, so must A1 and A2 be tested. But often these auxiliary hypotheses are not immediately obvious to the scientist, so they are not tested initially. It is only after the hypothesis is falsified (i.e., falsely falsified, one might say) and the dogged scientist refuses to give up are these auxiliary hypotheses discovered and tested separately. So, far from being a problem that the paper you linked to suggests, the recognition of these auxiliary hypotheses is a good thing because it forces the scientific community to come closer to the truth in their complex hypothesis testing.

That model of speciation you describe is in fact the allopatric model that is believed to be responsible for most speciation. However, the formation of a million or so species (a conservative, approximate number of extant species) in such a short span of time still boggles the mind.

By the way, evolution does not necessarily require additional mutations beyond the ones already involved in existing genes that are recombined. The requirement for evolution may be met by recombination of existing genes into new arrangements that may suffice to introduce genetic variability that natural selection can act upon. So, what is required in evolution is genetic variation, which can be produced by new mutations or by simply rearrangements of older genetic material in new ways. An extreme example of this occurs in speciation by polyploidy, in which there is absolutely no new mutation at all. What happens in this case is an increase in the number of chromosomal sets beyond the usual 2. What we see in speciation by polyploidy is an instantaneous formation of a new species as the offspring generation receives abnormally 3, 4, or even more sets of chromosomes compared to the 2 in the parents. The offspring cannot interbreed with the parents because of lack of chromosomal pairing at meiosis, the process that produces gametes, but they can among themselves.

Everyone here is consistent, with their own - off-topic message - theologically. Especially when compared, to what folks NORMALLY believe, in a theological, bell-shaped - statistical curve.

Besides, if I am right… Then I am performing a great service - for humanity. :smiley:

And what is the philosophical definition of beauty (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye))? Which is something the Twilight Zone episode, YouTube video raises at Eye of the Beholder.

The question to ask - is this: If the devil wants to give us things, like the Zombie Apocalypse…Then what does God, want to give us? Well, last night a Pentecostal preacher - gave his list:

Salvation
Sanctification
Gifts of the Holy Ghost
Health
Prosperity

Well, it got me to thinking. My list is NOT so far removed:

Salvation
Theosis
Charismatic gifts
Expect good things from God
Real presence in the Eucharist (How this is so, is a divine mystery. This answer is given, by the Eastern Orthodox and Methodists)

As far as zombies go, this GIF says it all :laughing:

Now we can add contemplation on our end (i.e. Fox Golden Key or Christians practicing yoga)…In order to be more receptive. Let’s look at part of today’s contemplation from the Center for Contemplation and Action

And of course, watching TV shows - like TV minster Joel Osteen.

And since part of this forum thread’s theme is “God’s true nature”…Here’s my view, of what he wants to give us. It’s up to us to choose.:

Food for thought:

  1. Purpose, Goodness, and Evolution, by Trevor Major, which examines some difficulties with theistic evolution.

  2. You know what destroyed Charles Darwin’s faith?,” a short essay by Richard Murray.

According to Bishop Ussher, God created the world on Sunday, October23, 4004 BC. I have no idea how he arrived at that date, but to my way of thinking, Ussher’s asseveration is no less believable than those of modern theorists concerning the evolution of the Universe.

I just finished reading This, and I have to say, it makes a very strong argument for intelligent design. It’s an enjoyable and mind-stretching read. There are little tidbits that fascinated me - such as, Jupiter. Jupiter has saved and is saving the Earth from annihilaton by meteors! The huge gravitational field of the big planet pulls in the meteors from the asteroid belt and other wanderers.
And that darn Moon! Happens to be in a place, the only place it could be to provide its function of keeping the Earth from leaning too far. You have to read it - those are just tidbits in a huge cosmological argument.
Buy it now. Read it fast, Report back. :sunglasses:

Dave, as a side note, Heeren is a sincere Christian and a great writer, but he has changed his position since the last edition of Show Me God—What the Message from Space Is Telling Us About God. He now says,

Please let me reiterate:

Blessings.

I may have mis-represented Heeren by using the term ‘intelligent design’! I forgot how loaded a term that was - I was only trying to point out that he made quite the case for the fine-balancing, to the point of being miraculous, of the cosmos and especially in the privileged position that God has put the Earth in- the number of parameters that have to be JUST SO in order for us to even be here. I call that ‘intelligent’ and it certainly is a ‘design’ and I doubt Heeren would back off from those presentations in his book.
As to the evolution angle - maybe Heeren needs to read James Perloff - Tornado in a Junkyard. Devastating to those who have the idea that evolutionists are just SO close to proving their theory. More on that later. I haven’t read the entire book, so I don’t know where he goes from there…
goodreads.com/book/show/195 … a_Junkyard