Billy wrote back, thoughtfully and thoroughly. I have done these exact same arguments before on this site, and I have to apologize for my unwillingness to respond in length again. Its nothing Billy has said or done, its just an exact repeat of arguments past.
However, I’ll continue, because I think its important.
Science, in fact, proves creationism on a number of levels.
I would love to see Billy’s reasoning for this. I’d like to see some evidence that science proves creationism. I can’t imagine what it would be, but I’m dying to know.
And calling Lee Strobel "not serious enough" just isn’t accurate.
Billy goes on to focus on Lee and his accomplishments to try and prove the point that A)Lee is credible, and B)therefor creationism occurred.
The problem is that Lee is just one person, with a very intense religious bias. There used to be a guy on this site who was terrible at trying to argue FOR creation, and we would regularly cut him down to size. One of the things he would routinely do is make a hugely overarching generalization based on the opinion of one or two people who were sufficiently biased.
Secondly, claiming that because 49% of Americans believe in creation, it must be true, is misleading. Just because most people believe in it, doesn’t mean its true. Thousands of years ago, roughly 100% of ‘people’ believed that the world was flat. Even today, more people than you think still believe in archaic, silly things. For example:
A February USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 13 percent of people surveyed said it would bother them if they had to stay on the 13th floor of a hotel.
In-spite of the fact that there are no scholarly articles showing evidence of a connection between the number 13 and bad luck.
Human beings can be easily brainwashed, clearly, 49% of Americans are still unable to question what is forced upon them.
The beauty of pure science is that it is pure logic. The creation myth lacks any logic.
The reason the creation myth isn’t taken seriously is because there is not one single study that provides even the most basic pieces of evidence or data that even suggests that creation occurred. On the other side, we have endless mountains of peer reviewed evidence that macro-evolution occurred. To date, there is no known alternative that stands up to the scrutiny of science. If something cannot stand up to that, then it cannot be taken seriously. That is just how the world works, there isn’t anyway around that unless you live in the woods and live completely of the land… but even then, science creeps its way into your life. I’m sorry, but there simply is no logical reason to think that creation occurred.
There is a lot of convincing stories in a book, and lots of people who believe so desperately that a Christian god created us, but thats it. For a long time I have challenged anyone to provide me with one single piece of evidence to suggest that creation took place, and no one has succeeded. I’m not saying Billy won’t succeed, but I’m saying that no one has before.
Scientists are perfectly willing to consider all possibilities of something. So if you present the world stage with a hypothesis that god created everything in 7 days, you can’t just expect everyone to believe it without any evidence.
This about it this way. Imagine walking into a room of a council of people who had spent their lives in a cave staring at a wall. They have just been released into the world. You are sitting on one side, and a scientist on the other. How would you convince this council that god created humans in 7 days? How would you be able to trump the scientists truck loads of evidence and data? How would you counter act the notion that nothing of your theory is observable? How would you dear reader?
And as far as proving creationism right — what do we have to prove the theories that underlie quantum physics — that there are 11 coexisting dimensions, etc.?
A valid question. We have mountains of proof of quantum mechanics because we can observe and predict the behavior of sub-atomic particles. We have mathematical formulas that we can plug conditions into and get results, that can be cross referenced with removing variables. Its extremely solid. The most basic proof is a nuclear bomb. Take a smoke detector for example, which uses Americium radiation to detect smoke particles. Consider light, which acts as both a particle and a wave, completely observable and reproducible. As for the hypothesis that there are 11 dimensions, that is only a suggestion that some have put forth, not a theory yet.
While this may surprise you I do believe in evolution — micro-evolution. Macro-evolution, which I detest and truly disagree with on every rational level…
It actually makes no logical sense to accept one but reject the other. Read my older posts on this subject.
Micro-evolution makes sense. Dogs mate and create different mixes — so do people, to be frank. But macro-evolution (which evolution is entirely based on) does not provide one concrete example (other than what is "theoretically" discussed in evolutionary doctrine).
Actually, thats mostly untrue. There is a lot of evidence for macro-evolution. Read this article first. Then look at this picture:
These are drawings of fossils that have been found, that match the appropriate date for their record or layer in the Earth’s strata. What we have in the fossil record are examples of millions upon millions of different species, one following another in various genus’, that have extremely similar phenotypes. Yet, we can see, that over time, features change.
Billy says that he accepts micro-evolution, well, what do you think would happen with micro-evolution over the period of millions of years? Dogs would just continue to look exactly like dogs? Obviously not. Read my post about this again, it explains this in more detail.
It is clear that Billy’s mystic believes are strong within him, so strong that he states that he doesn’t need evidence to believe in anything, that his faith is too strong. My question is, why not look at where that kind of blind faith comes from, it might provide some insight into why Billy casually tosses aside logic and reason for a world that is much more vague and obscure… but more importantly, a world that is so much easier to mold into whatever you want it to be to best suit your desires.
Enjoy.
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- Are there legitimate, scientific, and peer-reviewed criticisms of evolution?
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