Creation vs. Evolution

[Jacob]

You don't have to worry about confusing me with that. I can tell quite clearly what is the Holy Spirit and what is your fabrication.



That's probably one of the most honest things you have said so far.



There are certainly many things each of us do not know. The questions are "Is there something we are doing or have not done that keeps us ignorant when confronted with such issues. Are they outside of our capacity to understand, or are we being lazy or willfully ignorant?"

I have never claimed that everything we know is from empiricism alone. Empiricism is how we falsify/verify. Inductive processes are also involved. Again it is your sloppy thinking here that is the problem. And probably a bit of lazy thinking as well.

So given that, can you tell me one thing you know for certain, that is completely absent of inference as well as deductive thinking from empiricism?

Here is one thing I know apart from empiricism, that empirical means are a way of knowing some things. For example, we can learn that some things are predictable in certain situations... in Physics or Chemistry. However, our model for such things is not always known (of a certainty) to be entirely correct. Sometimes we are guessing at why things happen the way they do.

Here is a question, but you must answer it squarely and clearly (yeah, why should I expect you to do right this time? :chuckle.

If you analyze a question. With inference and deduction, given the empirical evidence, you come to one conclusion. But the voice in your head you claim is the Holy Spirit tells you that answer is wrong, who do you believe the objective standard or the voice in your head?

The Holy Spirit (and the Bible, God's word) is the objective standard.

Do you believe God's Spirit directs your life? I believe God's Spirit is certainly an influence in mine, and I do not want to live my life by myself and for myself. I want God to get the glory for the things He has done in my life.

Luke 12:12 NASB - for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say."

John 14:26 NASB - "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

 

[noguru]

Here is one thing I know apart from empiricism, that empirical means are a way of knowing some things. For example, we can learn that some things are predictable in certain situations... in Physics or Chemistry.

Francis Bacon is credited as being the first person to fully recognize this in modern written history in regard to its import to science. Though I think "predictable" is a less than optimal description. I think the word "consistent" explains the situation better. Because predictability is based upon our subjective view. And our subjective view is fallible.

Also in quantum mechanics, probability replaces predictability. Yet in that sense it still becomes consistent.

However, our model for such things is not always known (of a certainty) to be entirely correct.

Now you are starting to understand science.

Sometimes we are guessing at why things happen the way they do.
The Holy Spirit (and the Bible, God's word) is the objective standard.

Some "guesses" are better than others. Some guesses are based upon rigorous research and accurate analysis. Some guesses are based upon delusion and willful ignorance.

Do you believe God's Spirit directs your life?

Absolutely.

I believe God's Spirit is certainly an influence in mine, and I do not want to live my life by myself and for myself.

OK. I can't say that I would not want to live any more if there were no God. But the existence of God certainly lets me value principle above personality more consistently.

I want God to get the glory for the things He has done in my life.

That is inevitable, whether or not any one individual wants it.

 

[Jacob]

Francis Bacon is credited as being the first person to fully recognize this in modern written history in regard to its import to science. Though "predictable" is a bad description. I think the word "consistent" explains the situation better. Because predictability is based upon our subjective view. And our subjective view is fallible.

Also in quantum mechanics, probability replaces predictability. Yet in that sense it still becomes consistent.

Now you are starting to understand science.

Some "guesses" are better than others. Some guesses are based upon rigorous research and accurate analysis. Some guesses are based upon delusion and willful ignorance.

Absolutely.

OK. I can't say that I would not want to live any more if there were no God. But the existence of God certainly lets me value principle above personality.

That is inevitable, whether or not any one individual wants it.

In regard to predictability I am speaking, for example, of combining two substances repeatedly in a controlled environment. After a while we have the impression that the results are predictable.

 

[6days]

The rocks are totally support the Biblical flood model. .
The millions of marine fossils are buried in sedimentary, flood deposited rock. The only way all these fossils could gave been perfectly preserved is catastrophic flood burying them in sediment.

I suppose bona-fide field geologists and palaeontologists could all be wrong while you are right, but forgive me for not giving that too much credence.

I think you need to do some reading.
How about you explain how 40 layers of sedimentary rock containing millions of well preserved fossils happened without flooding?

 

[gcthomas]

I think you need to do some reading.
How about you explain how 40 layers of sedimentary rock containing millions of well preserved fossils happened without flooding?

Sea bed sedimentation, as must be very well known to anyone with even a cursory study of the subject at school. (It is in the 11-year-olds' curriculum here.)

 

[noguru]

In regard to predictability I am speaking, for example, of combining two substances repeatedly in a controlled environment. After a while we have the impression that the results are predictable.

Do you think my statements were accurate?

If not, we can discuss where you think they need more accuracy.

If they are accurate, I am not going to regress to your less comprehensive description/understanding here.

 

[6days]

6days]
I think you need to do some reading.
How about you explain how 40 layers of sedimentary rock containing millions of well preserved fossils happened without flooding?

Sea bed sedimentation, as must be very well known to anyone with even a cursory study of the subject at school. (It is in the 11-year-olds' curriculum here.)

If you were my 11 year old student I would have to fail you. Fossils rarely are formed by "sea bed sedimentation". Organic matter is usually consumed by parasites long before it gets buried in sediment. (And destroyed by normal decay prosess such as oxygenization) When millions organisms are fossilized together, the only logical explanation is a catastrophic butial IE flood sediment preserving

If you were my 11 year old student I would have you perform an experiment. Take a few marine creatures and slowly cover them in sediment over the course of a few months... Does it look like the process of fossilization has started? No of course not! Even the hard shelled creatures have started to rot.

Back to school for you GC.

 

[Silent Hunter]

If you were my 11 year old student I would have to fail you. Fossils rarely are formed by "sea bed sedimentation". Organic matter is usually consumed by parasites long before it gets buried in sediment. (And destroyed by normal decay prosess such as oxygenization) When millions organisms are fossilized together, the only logical explanation is a catastrophic butial IE flood sediment preserving

If you were my 11 year old student I would have you perform an experiment. Take a few marine creatures and slowly cover them in sediment over the course of a few months... Does it look like the process of fossilization has started? No of course not! Even the hard shelled creatures have started to rot.

Back to school for you GC.

:rotfl:

Not . . . even . . . close . . . :nono:

 

[alwight]

I think you need to do some reading.
How about you explain how 40 layers of sedimentary rock containing millions of well preserved fossils happened without flooding?

Well, the Grand Canyon shows many layers, including many different periods of marine environment and many different periods of dry land, complete with their respective expected fossils.
Do rabbit fossils ever feature in the wrong layers? :nono:
What we see today evidenced in those layers are in fact many separated events of non global, localised flooding and seas which I don't think is quite how the Bible tells it.

 

[gcthomas]

Even the hard shelled creatures have started to rot.

Why don't you try to get hard shells to rot, then post the pictures back here? Do the experiment, then come back and apologise.

:rotfl:

:chuckle:

 

[alwight]

Back to school for you GC.

Grand Canyon Thomas? :think:

 

[Jacob]

Do you think my statements were accurate?

If not, we can discuss where you think they need more accuracy.

If they are accurate, I am not going to regress to your less comprehensive description/understanding here.

I can tell you want to make progress. I'm troubled that you would speak ill of what was a part of my education in science, the scientific methodology, and in specific, Chemistry.

 

[Jacob]

I want God to get the glory for the things He has done in my life.

Luke 12:12 NASB - for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say."

John 14:26 NASB - "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

Matthew 5:16 NASB - "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

Romans 8:9 NASB - However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

Colossians 1:13 NASB - For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

1 Corinthians 6:20 NASB - For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

 

[Stuu]

In regard to predictability I am speaking, for example, of combining two substances repeatedly in a controlled environment. After a while we have the impression that the results are predictable.

I think humans tend to have a poor comprehension of probability, specifically the nature of stochastic processes.

There are perhaps hundreds of thousands of billions of billions of particles involved in a chemical reaction, and to a human observer you pretty much get the same observations when you repeat a reaction in a test tube. If a reaction is reversed, then allowed to proceed in the forwards direction again, the outcome on the atomic scale will be very different, especially if you could identify each individual particle. Which particles were the first to acquire enough activation energy? What was the order in which all those particles reacted, and which ones remained unreacted at the end the second time? Even if the macroscopic outcome appears the same, the process of the repeat experiment could be as different compared with the first as any two events we could imagine.

The order of the atomic-scale events is pretty much impossible to predict, and empirical methods may never get us to being able to make such predictions, but we can understand that as a fact, and the only way we can know that is through empirical means. Guessing is based on an empirical approach too, and the highest quality of knowledge we have comes from empirical methods.

So, can we generate useful knowledge by other means? Reason will get us so far, but as the age-old debate on that point shows, it's pretty limited. Hawking says philosophy is dead, and he is largely right. What are the other means of generating useful knowledge? There are some with which I might agree, but how universally useful is the knowledge they generate?

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

If you were my 11 year old student I would have to fail you. Fossils rarely are formed by "sea bed sedimentation". Organic matter is usually consumed by parasites long before it gets buried in sediment. (And destroyed by normal decay prosess such as oxygenization) When millions organisms are fossilized together, the only logical explanation is a catastrophic butial IE flood sediment preserving

If you were my 11 year old student I would have you perform an experiment. Take a few marine creatures and slowly cover them in sediment over the course of a few months... Does it look like the process of fossilization has started? No of course not! Even the hard shelled creatures have started to rot.

Back to school for you GC.

I hope you aren't actually teaching this to any 11 year olds. That would constitute a form of child abuse.

Stuart

 

[Jacob]

I think humans tend to have a poor comprehension of probability, specifically the nature of stochastic processes.

There are perhaps hundreds of thousands of billions of billions of particles involved in a chemical reaction, and to a human observer you pretty much get the same observations when you repeat a reaction in a test tube. If a reaction is reversed, then allowed to proceed in the forwards direction again, the outcome on the atomic scale will be very different, especially if you could identify each individual particle. Which particles were the first to acquire enough activation energy? What was the order in which all those particles reacted, and which ones remained unreacted at the end the second time? Even if the macroscopic outcome appears the same, the process of the repeat experiment could be as different compared with the first as any two events we could imagine.

The order of the atomic-scale events is pretty much impossible to predict, and empirical methods may never get us to being able to make such predictions, but we can understand that as a fact, and the only way we can know that is through empirical means. Guessing is based on an empirical approach too, and the highest quality of knowledge we have comes from empirical methods.

So, can we generate useful knowledge by other means? Reason will get us so far, but as the age-old debate on that point shows, it's pretty limited. Hawking says philosophy is dead, and he is largely right. What are the other means of generating useful knowledge? There are some with which I might agree, but how universally useful is the knowledge they generate?

Stuart

I think you do well to differentiate knowing something is true, even of a certainty, from guessing or just thinking something is probably true (not knowing for sure).

We have limits as humans, and I certainly hope not that we can have infinite knowledge (particularly if it all seems un-useful and hopeless) leading to hopelessness, but that we can know that which is truly good and right. That which is true is infinitely valuable.

 

[6days]

GC, we are making progress with you.
Let's review to see how you move closer towards the flood model, as you realize each of your points were incorrect.

The flood caused the rock layers with fossils.

The rock is nothing like flood deposits

Realizing your argument was wrong, you then said it was from sea bed sedimentation. Now realizing that argument was incorrect you have moved to refuting yourself...

What we see today evidenced in those layers are in fact many separated events of non global, localised flooding and seas ...

Which is it GC..." nothing like flood deposits" or "many floods"
( and yes multiple layers do support the flood model, but that wasn't the point)

See how when we go with the Bible and with evidence, we don't need to keep changing our minds?

In the beginning God created...

 

[Stuu]

I think you do well to differentiate knowing something is true, even of a certainty, from guessing or just thinking something is probably true (not knowing for sure).

We have limits as humans, and I certainly hope not that we can have infinite knowledge (particularly if it all seems un-useful and hopeless) leading to hopelessness, but that we can know that which is truly good and right. That which is true is infinitely valuable.

Religions deal in certainty, which is why they are so poisonous.

Stuart

 

[Jacob]

Religions deal in certainty, which is why they are so poisonous.

Stuart

Some Christians speak against Christianity being a religion. Jesus spoke out against the religious rulers of His day. But I believe true faith in the one true God should never be looked down upon, whether a relationship with God and Jesus or true religion which the Bible defines as visiting widows and orphans in their distress and keeping oneself unstained by the world.

 

[alwight]

Which is it GC..." nothing like flood deposits" or "many floods"
( and yes multiple layers do support the flood model, but that wasn't the point)

It seems clear enough to me that both GC and I were both describing strata indicating long time periods of aquatic terrain forming typical marine strata alternating with long periods of dry land. The land was periodically "in flood" over many millions of years, if you prefer.

GC is however quite right that they are not deposits from a flood event but are the natural and gradual building up of the particular terrain over many years as a result of being either "in flood" or in being dry land.

All you seem to be interested in is picking holes rather than in understanding what is being said.
Anyway do you really think my description fits with a single Biblical flood? I don't btw.
If my description is wrong then discuss it and say why, or will you typically just move on to a different attempted hole to pick at?