Leo Lazar Jakšić shared his thoughts on the creation vs evolution debate to our page, and barring a few grammatical mistakes, I think it fine enough, an excellent argument to share to this page, be sure to read below my admin tag!. My only points of contention are in the framing of Creationist vs Atheist, the way I would frame it is as Creationist vs those who accept and believe in Science. Further while we have relative consensus on how we evolved with complex systems of morality, that is the one question he mentioned, where we dont have 100% consensus on what it means to be moral, which is why in philosophy we discuss ethic. I pose a Utilitarian model, but it is just one of many suggestions, in a debate that leaves much grey area in whether our morals our objective, subjective, or somewhere in between depending on the issue. -Hayabusa0celot Regardless Leo writes: [While the decision to join either the religious or the atheist point of view is left entirely up to personal choice, itd be nice to have some kind of knowledge backing up the claims you intend to represent. This is because battles of reasoning can only be settled with a reasonable debate. Now, the problem is, not all people, be they atheists or creationists, have the same degree of education or information available to them to reply to absolutely every question bomb thrown by the opposing side, so its only fair if debates are left to those that are actually the most familiar with the subjects. For example, on the side of the atheists supporting evolution we have people like Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye, Lawrence Krauss, Neil de Grasse Tyson and Steven Hawking, while on the side of creationists we have Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron, Ken Ham, as well as Kent and Fred Hovind, each side constantly spewing more debates in promotion of what they think is the truth. Unfortunately, those debates dont seem to be going anywhere, so itd be nice if more people were educated on their respective subjects so they knew what they signed up for. But let us put the issue of which side has more evidence or which side makes more sense aside and take a look at the very process of getting information, because Im actually kinda curious in which side of the table is more reliable in their sources. Let us assume we have two groups of people, one side being creationists, in this case Christians, and the other being atheists defending evolution. Each side asks some questions to the other one in an attempt to prove them wrong. Each side agrees that they will both have a certain time limit to study all of the materials available to them to make sure they dont answer any question in a bias manner or get anything wrong in their own descriptions. What happens in this debate during and after the materials are reviewed is quite interesting. In order to prepare themselves for the debate, atheists are studying each of the given questions carefully. This set of questions may include some of creationist typical arguments like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, where morality comes from, what happened before the Big Bang, how do you know evolution works and so on. What atheists have on their disposal is a huge variety of books, reports, reviews and other kinds of scientific documents. For example, when asked a question about evolution, theyd have to carefully review chapters in books on biology, genetics, immunology, anatomy, paleontology, geology, and so on, most of these written by many different authors over a great amount of time, because they cannot exclude the possibility that some of their materials may be outdated and some data has been proven wrong and rewritten by authors with better observations. So, theyll have quite a lot of work to do. On the other hand, creationists will turn to only one source of knowledge, which is their sacred scripture, because thats the word of God. In this case, its the Bible. Now, it may seem that creationists have only one book to consult, but the Bible is actually a collective of several dozen books that form a united text, this includes the both Old and the New Testament, and they may also need to review all the possible translations, preferably the one in ancient Hebrew, to make sure they dont get anything wrong due to a mistranslation. Either way, its safe to assume the creationists will have a lot less work to do than the evolutionists, and as they only have one source to look at, it would logically assume that their odds of contradicting one another are a lot slimmer. But lets see what happens after both sides have concluded their research. The Atheists have read up multiple books from multiple authors from multiple timelines, but even under the assumption that each atheist did their research seperately, when asked their questions, they all come up with unanimous answers. This is because various fields of science, while different, still complete one another. Lets look at some examples: How can you know morality without God? –Because morals are subjective and based on individual profile and social influence. How old do you think the Earth is? –Numerous methods have measured the Earths age at around 4.56 billion years. Doesnt the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics disprove evolution? –No, it doesnt. How come we havent found any transitional forms? –We have, both in fossil records and living specimens. Also, every life form, humans included, are transitional forms. Okay, that last one was two answers, and all of the previously asked questions may also be answered in another way, but the important thing about those answers is that they do not contradict one another. Given enough time, an atheist can and will explain how every human can be considered a transitional form while at the same time we claim to have found them in the fossil records. In fact, I can answer to that question myself, but thats a story for another comment. In general, atheists give one and the same answer despite having looked up different sources. Now lets see how the creationists did their homework, and this is where it gets interesting. Despite having only one book at their disposal, creationists cannot seem to find a common answer. For instance, the question Where did the water that caused Noahs flood come from and where did it disappear to? Creationists all read the same scripture, yet they seem to be disputed about this one answer. Some creationists will say that the water came as a heavy downpour, others that the skies literally opened up and let the waters from beyond the firmament drown the land. Others will theorize that a comet made of ice crashed on the Earth, melted, and caused the flood, while some will claim the waters came from deep within the Earth. For that matter, How did the animals on the arc not misbehave or die during the trip? Some will say all animals were sentient and knew they shouldnt attack others, while others will blame solitary confinement. Some say the animals were hibernating, others that they didnt need nutrition at all, some that animals arrived at the arc as infants, while the lost few fundamentalists will just fall back to saying it was Gods magic. Some creationists will say the Bible supports the scientific view that the Earth is spherical, but others will state it says the Earth is flat and will then attempt to present evidence as to why that is. Some will say vestigial organs such as mans nipples, wise teeth and appendix were made by God deliberately, and others that they are the result of the Original Sin. And dont get me started on the dinosaurs, creationists have no common grounds and no explanations to their existence. Some say they were living alongside men, and were wiped out in the flood because they didnt board the arc, but others will claim they did board the arc and went extinct in a later event, for which they cannot agree on what it was, ranging from suffocation, starvation, drop in temperature to the infamous nostral combustion. Some dont even think dinosaurs were actual animals, and that the fossils we have were actually either planted by God to test our faith, buried by Satan to lead us astray, fabricated by scientists in a global conspiracy, or were simply naturally-formed rocks. Some will say that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible in the part that describes the Behemoth, but others will state that Behemoths description matches that of a dragon instead. They also wont be able to agree on if the missing links we discovered to explain the origin of man were actually deformed humans or walking apes. Creationists would not, and still cannot find any agreement on these and many other topics that were supposed to prove their religion as the right one or disproving science. And this is not even taking into account the biblical contradictions, the immoral acts of God and his prophets, the incompatibility of biblical stories with recorded history and archeology, which parts of the bible are to be meant literally and which were just metaphors, the numerous denominations of Christianity that interpret the Bible differently, or what every other religion in the world has to say on the same matter. So lets review this: We start of with a simple question given to either atheists or creationists. Atheists can search for the answer in numerous books and materials, spreading further and further away from the subject, and they will still reach the same non-contradictory conclusion. Creationists will only review one book with its own subjects, yet each reader will come up with his own interpretation and well get multiple contradictory theories. Numerous sources agreeing on it, or a single source coming up with multiple truths. So you tell me: Which side seems more reliable?]
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 22:17:17 +0000
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