Creation vs. Evolution - Need Help!

[Skoobuh]

I'm sure this has come up many, many times on here. So I apologize if I'm upsetting anyone by starting this thread. If this needs to be moved, I understand.

Essentially, my brother-in-law believes there's no evidence for evolution or at the very least, there's no evidence for evolution which can't be "interpreted" as evidence for creation as well. I don't typically engage in these sorts of debates with people, believe what you wanna believe, ya know? But he presented it as "I believe what I do because the evidence supports it and if you can show me otherwise, I'll change my views". So, naturally, I attempted to explain evolution and the evidence to him.

It's been nearly a month now and what I've realized is I don't know enough about biology to explain it to him and he thinks he knows enough to discredit everything I bring up. It's getting tiring and I'm confident that if what he's saying could be seen by people knowledgeable and educated in biology, they could explain to him what he has wrong or isn't fully understanding.

I finally convinced him to put his objections on a science forum and that's when I found you guys. Can anyone help me out? I was thinking I'd have him make an account and he could post on this thread to get it started.

[Moontanman]

There is no evidence what so ever for young earth creationism, I suggest you go to talkorigins.org most everything has been explained there. If you want to discuss specifics feel free to reply.

[Mitch Bass]

Galapagos. The Galapagos islands. Your brother will not be albe to explain what has happened on those islands, where Darwin got the idea of evolution in the first place, without being nearly certain that evolution is, as many scientist have said. "there is no other explanation of science with more proof than that evolution is the reason for why the phenomenon that took place on the Galapagos islands.

 

Let me put it to you like this, for your brother in law to deny the almost certain reality of evolution, your brother in law would have to deny the existence of the reality of the Galapagos islands. Your brother is welcome to do this. Unfortunately for your brother in law in terms of trying to deny evolution, I have souveneirs from my parents who took a trip there. The reality is, if your brother asked me, I have never been to the Galapagos islands. However, as rule in police detective work, for the most part, when there is a crime, there is a motive, an ability, and evidence. Something like this your brother in law would have to create now in order to deny the almost certainty of evolution. Your brother in-law would have to create a motive for people to conspire the existence of the Galapagos islands and a means for so many people to be fooled into thinking what many people have had which they experienced as first person experience of visiting the Galapagos islands.

[cdcrane82]

So this is it? Let the enlightenment begin!

 

You say there is no evidence for young earth creationism. I say there is no evidence for old earth or evolution. I say there are all kinds of things that we can see in nature, and these can be interpreted in different ways, depending on your preconceived notions of how the world works. The "evidence" itself isn't enough to prove one or the other without taking the logistics into account. For example, just because you can connect the dots on your "tree of life" doesn't meant that it's actually possible for one animal to evolve into another.

 

All I'm saying is that there isn't anything in this world that is contrary to a young earth creation view.

I don't deny the existence of the Galapagos islands. What about them is only possible by evolution?

[Moontanman]

So this is it? Let the enlightenment begin!

 

You say there is no evidence for young earth creationism. I say there is no evidence for old earth or evolution. I say there are all kinds of things that we can see in nature, and these can be interpreted in different ways, depending on your preconceived notions of how the world works. The "evidence" itself isn't enough to prove one or the other without taking the logistics into account. For example, just because you can connect the dots on your "tree of life" doesn't meant that it's actually possible for one animal to evolve into another.

 

All I'm saying is that there isn't anything in this world that is contrary to a young earth creation view.

I don't deny the existence of the Galapagos islands. What about them is only possible by evolution?

 

 

You would actually have to explain the instances of evolution that have been observed both in the lab and in the wild. You would have to explain the genetic evidence that totally follows the fossil evidence as well. You would have to explain any you don't find rabbits in the Cambrian, fossils are not found out of place.

 

Now give me something that supports YEC other than a book...

BTW, I would suggest you go to talkorigins.org and see if your "evidence" has already been debunked... On top of all that you have astronomical evidence the universe is 13.7 billion years old, geological evidence the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. YEC doesn't hold water, if you want I can go to the specifics of the bible that are horse feathers as well...

So your first post was completely dishonest?

[pwagen]

This nonexistant "debate" between YEC and science should be looked at on the predictions either idea makes. We can look at biology, physics, geology, for example. Now, what we do is take a look at the hypothesis and figure out what kind of predictions they will make in different scenario.

 

When it comes to geology, we would expect to see fossils all mashed up together in disorder, if YEC is true. Supposedly they were all killed in the Flood, which covered the Earth in water. If what science says is right, we would expect to find fossils sorted in different strata depending on when in the past they lived.

 

 

We see fossils sorted in different strata depending on when in the past they lived. This is not explained in any way by YEC. Moontanman brings up the easiest way ever to disprove evolution - find a bunny along with the dinosaurs.

 

 

In general biology, we would expect to be able to make us of different ways to decide how old things are. In YEC, the Earth is believed to be 6000 years old, or so. We would therefor not be able to find anything that's older than 6000 years.

 

 

Genetic markers show us that "Pando" is around 80,000 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)

Old Tjikko has been determined to be 9500 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tjikko

The way we know geology works, we know how long it takes to make certain minerals, as well as fossils to form. Both of which rank in more time than the Earth is old according to YEC.

 

 

If the Earth is young, this would imply some kind of creator. I hope I'm not assuming too much when we can assume this creator knows what he's doing. We would therefor not be expected to find any kind of redundancy. In evolutionary science, we would expect older features to be changed in such a way as to make them obsolete, function completely different from their original intention or just be downright annoyingly bad in their layout.

 

 

Chickens, who have beaks and no teeth, have been found to have the genes for teeth. However, they are dormant and not activated during their development. This is consistent with the ancestors of chicken having teeth, but lost them during their evolution. It makes no sense, when it comes to design, to put genes there which are not to be used anyway.

The human appendix seems to serve no function in humans anymore, yet it is still there. And since it's causing problems, it would be a stupid design error of an omniscient creator to make.

Penguins are birds, meaning they have wings. However, they use their wings as flippers, and they have evolved to aid in this, meaning their wings are no longer even remotely useful for flying.

The best way to connect two places that are close to eachother is a straight line. The larynx nerve simply put connects the back of our brains to the larynx. Connecting these SHOULD be a simple matter of dragging the nerve from the back of our heads to the front of our throats. However, the larynx nerve actually goes downwards to our chests, circles the aorta, then comes back up to the larynx. This might not seem to be such a big deal, until you look at the same nerve in giraffes. Then it's not a matter of a small detour, but a 3 metre one. This is explained perfectly well by evolution, but as far as intelligent design goes, it removes the intelligence from the equation.

 

 

If evolution was true, we'd expect to see traces of how species evolved, and they would be separated by location due to moving and adapting to their environment. Seeing as if YEC was true, and Noah let out all the animals from the Ark a mere 4-5000 years ago, we would not expect them to have traversed very far, and definitely not to get to other continents which are only accessible by water. We would therefor expect to see a large concentration of animals around the Middle Eastern area of the planet, and none on neither the Americas nor Australia. Mitch Bass brings up the Galapagos Island, which should be deserted right now.

 

Thanks to genetic analysis, we can trace the ancestry of living animals today. And this ancestry shows a huge correspondence to the migrations of lifeforms all through the history of the planet. Another example are ring species, which are predicted by evolution. YEC does not explain that.

 

 

Now, which of these evidence are wrong? Which ones show YEC to be the better hypothesis? Do you have any other evidence, that we don't??

 

YEC has been shown to be exceptionally bad at being useful for just about anything. Meanwhile, evolution has stood more tests than any other theory in science, and we've had an incredible amount of use for it in such different areas as medicine and engineering.

[delboy]

So this is it? Let the enlightenment begin!

 

You say there is no evidence for young earth creationism. I say there is no evidence for old earth or evolution. I say there are all kinds of things that we can see in nature, and these can be interpreted in different ways, depending on your preconceived notions of how the world works. The "evidence" itself isn't enough to prove one or the other without taking the logistics into account. For example, just because you can connect the dots on your "tree of life" doesn't meant that it's actually possible for one animal to evolve into another.

 

All I'm saying is that there isn't anything in this world that is contrary to a young earth creation view.

I don't deny the existence of the Galapagos islands. What about them is only possible by evolution?

 

 

The huge variety of evidence supporting evolution puts it virtually beyond any doubt. I'm not going to waste my time quoting any because your mind seems completely closed.

 

But I'll quote one piece of evidence unconnected with evolution science. I don't know much about young earth creation, but radioactive dating puts the age of the earth at billions of years. But maybe you don't believe in radioactivity either.

Edited May 25, 2014 by delboy

[Arete]

I say there is no evidence for old earth or evolution.

 

As this topic has arisen many times, this is a copypasta I posted in another thread on the topic:

 

- We have direct observational evidence, like the Lenski experiment which has evolved E. coli populations for 25 years and shown how through evolutionary processes, they can develop new phenotypic traits. We also have instances where a population of organisms has diverged into two species during historical tiime, like the apple maggot fly and the yellow fever mosquito.

 

- We have biogeographical evidence that organisms share common ancestry. For example, many of the organisms which are found on the former continents which made up Gondwana are more related to each other than the places they are near to now, providing evidence of common ancestry.

 

- We have macro-morphological evidence, like vestigial organs like tail bones in humans and leg bones in whales, which support common ancestry with animals with tails and legs, respectively.

 

- On the cellular level, the evidence for common ancestry becomes even more compelling. Despite the obvious differences between say an dandelion and a horse, when you look at the the structural components of the cells, they are largely the same. This suggests that, despite the massive differences in external morphology you see today, they share common ancestry.

 

- Prehaps the most elegant (or maybe I'm just biased by working in genetics) evidence comes from genetics. All organisms on earth share the same basic structure and code for their blueprint. The study of genetics provides a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism by which phenotypic traits are inherited, how they can change, and provide the co-ordinates required to map the evolution of life.

 

This is not an exhaustive list of the lines of evidence we have for evolution - but when you "overlay" each of these "jigsaws" with each other, you can put together a more complete picture of the overall evidence, and the image we get is overwhelmingly consistent with evolutionary theory. As we look more, get more pieces of each puzzle, learn how to reshuffle the pieces we have more accurately, we get a better overall picture, and it only keeps looking more and more like evolution is the right fit for the data.

 

As an ending, I don't believe that evolutionary theory is exclusive of religion - it would seem that the Pope strongly agrees, calling the argument "absurd". You can believe in evolution and God - I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Professor Francisco Ayala who is a former Dominican Priest, a Professor of Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine and former president of the AAAS. You might find some of his essays on religion and science interesting, especially, his book - "Am I a monkey?" which addresses the question of what evolution is and whether it is compatible with belief in God. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/26/AR2010042603381.html

http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2134

[John Cuthber]

All I'm saying is that there isn't anything in this world that is contrary to a young earth creation view.

 

 

That's because the YEC view of creation includes sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "Lah lah lah: I'm not listening" when presented with evidence they don't like.

 

So, when I point out that we can count tree rings going back further the the YEC view says is the age of the Earth, Their reply is to ignore the point, or try to pretend it isn't true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology

[Delta1212]

Out of curiosity, what would be some types of evidence that would convince you that evolution is more likely than Young Earth Creationism?

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

 

The creation v evolution debate is old and stale — all of the debating points are available elsewhere online. There's nothing new here to discuss. The only data to be gathered is to see if the n+1st creationist to come along will be as intellectually dishonest as the previous ones have been.

 

The science has shown that cannot persuade someone with facts when facts were not used to arrive at the original position. This is not a science discussion in more ways than one. And, as we see here, the gain gets turned way up, so when a single trollish post is dropped in the mix, a lot happens.

 

Not gonna happen.

 

Skoobuh, if you have specific evolution questions, you are free to ask them in a new thread. I'm sorry that a hijack has forced closure.