3rd Creationist Cartoon change.

Brian Tweed: 2nd Response to 1st Question

As before I will be putting his questions and responses, as well as when he quotes me, in Blue, while my replies will be in Bold Green.

Brian,

Looking at the response I had already started, I found I’ve almost completed it, but I also found a pattern.  What I found is you were almost never giving explanations for your claims.  Instead you answer my questions with statements that seem to be based purely in opinion with NO facts to back up what you have stated. 

My current responses below have “Brian2” directly after the section I am replying to for clarity of new verses old entries to you.

Hi SP
Since you have stated on your twitter account that you do not think I answered the question “Does the fossil record match claims of a Noachian Flood” and then added “I don't think he answered the ?” I will attempt to respond to both your additional questions and your accusations in this post.

First of all, I thought that it was a bit underhand to post your ‘accusation’ that I had not answered your ‘question’ in your twitter post, before you replied on Facebook. You know that I did not use twiiter, and therefore your accusation of me trying to sidestep your question was made ‘public’ even before you had informed me. The fact that you have chosen to ‘selectively publish’ our conversation on a blog is an interesting development, as this seems to indicate that you are more interested in having a ‘public discussion’ than you are interested in having a meaningful exchange of views. I also find it interesting that even though I am willing to stand behind my statements as my personal opinion, you would rather hide behind your anonymous pseudonym and avoid so many of my questions, whilst you accuse me of not answering yours.

As you can no doubt pick up from my statement above, I am not too happy with your actions, but as I have now made public a much fuller account of our discussion on my own blog, I will leave anyone that is interested in reading it, to get a better feel for how are discussion has ‘progressed’ over the 6 months since you suggested we have a discussion.

All this said, I will now try to respond once again to your posts, though I do not feel that you have put the same amount of time or effort into replying to my posts.

Brian2: The above three paragraphs after your introduction paragraph will be quickly addressed.  First, the posting of your reply and my response to my first question occurred in the order of Blog, Twitter, & Facebook all within an hour of each other.  It was not my intent to selectively publish content from our conversation on my blog, but it was of course (as the public can see from our conversations on March 25 and May 20) for it to be easier to track  the treads of thought as Facebook posts are singular in nature and not an open forum.  I’ve already discussed the reasons for having a Nome de Plume (being a public school teacher) and will address questions you feel I’ve avoided, but isn’t this why we agreed to restart the conversation with one question to each other?  I’m sorry you feel like I’ve not put the “…same amount of time or effort into replying…” but I would have hoped you would have pressed those points at the time they were made.  I will try to address them now.

As I stated in my reply to your twitter post, I do not think that you asked the question as succinctly on Facebook as you did in your ‘tweet’ If you had really asked me “Does the fossil record match claims of a Noachian Flood” I would have replied in a much different way than I did. As I do not believe that there is a clear ‘fossil record’ but it is actually closer to the truth to say that there are various ‘interpretations’ of the fossils that are found.

I would say that the questions that you asked were far more convoluted than the one you suggested on your tweet, and I was not really sure what you were asking. Perhaps that is more down to my ability to understand your question, than it was down to your ability to form your question, so I will attempt to answer it for you now, taking your additional questions and clarifications onboard.

Brian2: I find this explanation confusing to say the least.  I started my first question to you by laying out the Young Earth Creationist position as it is most commonly expressed by various organizations and individuals (such as AIG, Henry Morris, and Kent Hovind) with dates and events. I then mentioned various types of organisms, the list could have been much larger, that should have been found on the Ark according to YEC’s claims the fossil record being formed by the Noachian flood.  My question was then based on the information I listed from YEC claims and the sequence of the fossil record/geological column and was very specific in that I was asking about recent/top layers and living organisms matching while the organisms from older/deeper layers not currently found alive and why there is no mixing of recent organisms throughout the fossil record/geological column.  I asked a very specific question after clarifying the YEC position I feel it is the same question I posted on Twitter, but, again, I was focusing on specifics.

SP stated “the Earth was covered by water for a year which destroyed all life except that which was brought aboard a ship with eight humans”

To which I replied “it was only the ‘land dwelling animals with breath in their nostrils’ that needed to be saved, as those plants and organisms that could survive a flood did not need to be taken onboard the Ark”

Brian2: What is your basis for the claim that only those with “…breath in their nostrils…” were taken and are you also claiming that there were some animals/plants (what about fungi, protists and bacteria) that were on the Ark because they could not have survived the flood otherwise? 

SP writes
Brian: Which is why I asked about a list of land dwelling animals that do not currently exist being on the Ark

Perhaps you are aware of the clarifications that I mentioned, but your original words did not convey them, which is why I felt it necessary to highlight the fact that not ‘all life’ on the planet was destroyed, as many sceptics try to suggest.

Brian2: What is your basis for this claim?  What life was not on the Ark & not destroyed by the flood and how did it survive a yearlong deluge?

SP stated “In Genesis 6 & 7 it is claimed that the Ark contained 2 of every beast and foul of the Earth (7 of the clean types) including “every thing that creepeth upon the earth“

To which I replied by informing you that there only needed to be about 2-10000 animals, and not once again ‘everything’ as you suggested.

Brian2: What is the basis for this claim and can you give me a list of what organisms were taken aboard the Ark?

(SP comments)
Brian: So then what is a “kind” are all carnivores a “kind”, what about all animals in the same genus??? What is a scientifically testable definition of the word that would apply to all instances?

First of all, I will point out that these are actually new questions, even though we had apparently agreed to answer just one question at a time, to prevent the conversation ranging too far in each post. But as I do not mind answering your questions, as it helps me to further clarify the YEC point of view on this matter I will take some time to reply to these ‘new’ questions.

Brian2: These are not new questions I have brought up, but instead they are questions you have created by making claims without backing up or explaining your reasons for making these statements in answer to my original question.

As you are no doubt aware the statements in the bible are not claimed to be ‘scientifically testable definitions’ of words, but rather the recounting of historical facts to people such as us that were not there to witness the events. 

Brian2: But you are claiming that the Noachian flood is a real event and therefore it should be scientifically testable.  This means when you claim that “Kinds” were aboard the Ark, we should be able to discuss what this means and how it matches with the present.

Obviously, when we try to ascertain details about the events that happened many thousands of years ago in a distant land, we are limited in what we can actually ‘know’ for sure. This problem is multiplied many times over when you read a ‘scientific’ article by someone trying to work out from a few small damaged clues, what supposedly happened ‘millions of years ago’. This is one of the reason why ‘scientific’ articles are full of so many ‘fuzzy words’, such as ‘may have’, ‘could have’, ‘some think’, ‘it is hypothesized’ and such like. Though the articles may be written by great scientists, they are aware that much of what they believe to have happened in the distant past is just speculation and a certain degree of imagination.

Brian2: Yet, when a peer reviewed article is published it then becomes open for discussion and debate which can lead to predictions that are testable (of course the article itself is most likely based on this exact same situation which is why there are always citations to previous studies).

I therefore cannot give you a ‘scientific’ definition of a ‘kind’, but since we know that creatures only bring forth after their kind, we can speculate that this meant any animal that could mate and produce other viable offspring in the original created order was of the same ‘kind’. None of us know for sure what these created kinds were, but then as the bible is not a scientific text book which is to given to us to answer ‘every’ question we have, this is not surprising. Though it is only speculation at this stage, most YEC would agree that the ‘kind’ is closer to the ‘family’ level of the current system of biological classification. 

Brian2:  So then, how does this match with the fossil record?  Are you now claiming that the organisms that boarded the Ark would not look like the ones that currently exist today?  Can you give evidence to back up your claims? This claim is also invalidated by the FACT of the fossil record having organisms that look very similar to the ones we have today and that they are arranged in a order showing common descent.

Obviously, this means that the answer to your question: “are all carnivores a “kind”” the answer is no. As to your question “what about all animals in the same genus?“ we obviously cannot say for sure, but as the ‘family’ order can cover more than one ‘genus’ then it is unlikely that we can restrict a ‘kind’ to this order. 

Brian2: Again, I am requesting evidence for this claim, but sticking your opinion that the Order Carnivora is not a “Kind”, but that Families are a “Kind” are you claiming (focusing on Families under the Order Carnivora) that what boarded and departed from the Ark were two of each of the Families in this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivora#Classification ?

This is not a problem only for creationist though, as when we find a fossil, we cannot be sure what ‘species’ it came from, and so sometimes “Families can be used for evolutionary, palaeontological and generic studies because they are more stable than lower taxonomic levels such as genera and species” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) 

Brian2: First of all new species are assigned to new fossils all the time, so I’m not sure your basis for that claim.  Secondly, you do realize that Humans are in the Family Hominidae which includes all species of Gorilla, Chimps and Orangutan.  Lastly, your use of the quote from Wikipedia shows a lack of understanding of Cladistics & Systematics, so I suggest you do some research into what Monophyly and Clade mean in biology.

As most YEC would accept that a ‘kind’ is a much broader term than both ‘species’ and ‘genus’, we can accept the fact that all our present ‘breeds’ of dogs came from some representative of perhaps the ‘canidae’ family. If we found a fossil of all the different breeds of dogs, it is likely that they would be classed as different ‘species’, due to their immense differences in morphology. In fact apparently even Darwin realised that this may have been true of the pigeons.
Whilst reading Sean B. Carroll’s book “The making of the fittest”, he made this statement.
“Darwin pointed out that the varieties of pigeon were so markedly different from one another that if shown to an ornithologist and told that they were wild birds, they would each be ranked as well-defined species. But Darwin deduced correctly that they were all descended from the rock pigeon.” (P46) 

Brian2: I’ve made the same claim about dogs, but of course these are a domestic species which means that humans are doing the breading and as such if humans disappeared then dogs would become biological species as they would be geographically isolated and many would be morphologically incapable of reproduction (AND they might be behaviorally different enough that they will not interbreed ***Added after my post on Facebook to Brian yesterday). 

So, YEC would believe that all the animals that were on the ark were of the ‘kinds’ of creatures that were the ancestors of the living species we see about us now. We believe the principle that ‘life brings forth life’ and so we accept that all land animals alive now had a common ancestor on the ark, though it may have looked much different than many of the varieties of creatures alive now.  

Brian2: And you evidence for this claim is…? But it is also nessesarry to point out that this statement CONFILCTS with your claim that all organisms found in fossil formations are there due to a one time flood.  I made this point earlier in this round of replies and would like to you explain the evidence for why, as you say above,  the life before and on the Ark “…may have looked much different…” and yet we find organisms in the fossil record that are almost exactly the same as “…varieties of creatures alive now.”

You on the other hand, believe that all organisms alive now came from a common ancestor that was once just dead chemicals.
Your belief that ‘dead matter brings forth life’ does not seem very scientific to me. 

Brian2: Abiogenesis is a field of science we can address later, but will stick with questions relating to how you answered my question about the fossil record and the Noachian flood.


(SP comments)
Brian: So if we take your statement as is, how would we know the sedimentary rocks that were formed before the flood? Would we rely on the Law of Superposition only or is there another way to date these pre-flood fossil beds? The ones formed after the flood would be easy, again Law of Superposition, but they would only contain modern animals I assume? Would you agree??? Since you are claiming that one Flood that lasted only a year created all these (besides the aforementioned pre&post deposits), how do you explain Aeolian layers (some are so delicate as to contain spider footprints) mixed in with all the other layers? How does this occur when the whole Earth is completely covered by water?

Again, you are now breaking the agreed format, and whilst you want to pick and choose which questions that I have raised that you are willing to answer, I will attempt to give AN answer to these additional questions, though I doubt that they will satisfy you.

Brian2: This, again, is not a new question, but instead is my asking you to explain your answer to my original question.

Firstly, “how would we know the sedimentary rocks that were formed before the flood?“ 

As I mentioned at the beginning of my earlier post, I am not an expert in this area, and I would have to research this before I could give you a better informed opinion on it. My view is though that they are likely to be few and far between as they would likely be due to local flooding, so I cannot say much more about this at the moment.

Brian2: Ok, so I will wait for you to do the research necessary to answer this question.

Secondly, “Would we rely on the Law of Superposition only or is there another way to date these pre-flood fossil beds?”
The short answer would be no, we would not rely on the Law of Superpositon, as though this was an interesting hypothesis, it was not tested experimentally until recently, and it was seen to incorrect in the experiments that were carried out by Pierre Y. Julien, Ph.D of Colorado State University. If you doubt his qualifications they can be seen here, and you can watch a video of the experiments on youtube, though I am sure you will find some reason to dispute his findings.

Brian2: Instead of making an argument from authority, how about explaining your understanding of why you think the Law of Superposition is incorrect.  What I found interesting about the video is lamination occurs all the time in all different types of layers and I’m not sure how it supports your claim that the Law of Superposition has been disproved. In my original question (and first response) I also brought up that Superposition correlates with Radiometric dating, but I’ll await an explanation.

Thirdly, “The ones formed after the flood would be easy, again Law of Superposition, but they would only contain modern animals I assume? Would you agree???“

No, I do not accept this, as I do not think that the Law of Superosition is actually a scientifically verified ‘law’, and therefore, I do not think that we can rely on it to ‘date’ fossils. Also, you seem to be ignoring what I acknowledge in my last post, that I accept variations and change over time in the creatures since the flood, so I do not think that every ‘species’ has remained unchanged since the flood but I accept what is now known as ‘micro-evolution’ in that organisms have changed over time, in minor ways that were present in the genetic code of the creatures when God created the various ‘kinds’ of animals. So, it is clear that I would believe that the creatures we see around us now are probably different in outward appearance from their ancestors that exited the Ark. 

Brian2: And your evidence for these claims are…? 

Perhaps you could define the ‘evolutionary biology’ that you want to discuss, and what you think you have ‘proof’ for, as perhaps I will agree with you more than you would seem to believe. I do not reject all definitions of ‘evolution’, so you will need to define what you mean by ‘evolution is a fact’ before we continue our discussion.

Brian2: That is a whole new question that I will address after you can answer my original question.  If you like I will include that in my response to your first question of me as it relates to the part on Natural Selection.

Fourthly, “how do you explain Aeolian layers (some are so delicate as to contain spider footprints) mixed in with all the other layers? “

Obviously, as I am not an expert, this would require some further research before I could answer this, but our claim is not that the Flood covered the whole Earth for a year, as parts of it may have been covered at a later points than others, and as the land masses changed after the flood, there may have been parts that were covered slowly and as the tides rose and fell it may have been uncovered at various times too. Have you now changed that you want to discuss the fossil record and geology? If so I will have to read up more on these topics, but I thought you wanted to concentrate on the firm scientific knowledge about ‘biological evolution’ rather than on the highly speculative thoughts and hypotheses about what things may have been like ‘millions of years ago’. 

Brian2: What evidence do you have for the claim that the entire surface was not covered for a whole year?  Again, this is not changing the topic as it relates to my original question.  I hope you can better answer this question after you do some research into Aeolian sedimentary types.

Fifthly,” How does this occur when the whole Earth is completely covered by water? “
The Flood was sent to destroy all the life forms that God had sent it to destroy, but this does not mean that all of the Earth was covered by water for the full year, it is likely to have ebbed and flowed over various parts of the land as some areas arose due to the tectonic activity that is likely to have accompanied the events, as mentioned in other parts of the bible.

Brain2: And your evidence for this claim is…?

To be continued...

My 2nd Creationists Cartoon changed to support Evolution

My 1st Creationist Cartoon changed to support Evolution

My First Question for Brian Tweed, his reponse and my reply.

The following is my first question to Brian (in Green) with his response (in Blue) and my reply (Bold Green).

Hi SP,
I will try to respond to your statements and question(s), but please bear in mind that I am not an expert, nor a spokesperson for YECs, though I will speak only as someone that accepts the bible as the word of God, and also accepts as accurate the interpretation of the bible that places the creation of the Earth as less than 10,000 years ago.

SP writes
“Being that you are a Young Earth Creationist, I am intrigued by the alternate explanations you have for a variety of concepts that are explained currently by scientific theories. To me, YEC means that you accept that all existence is no older than 10,000 years old and at some after the creation event the Earth was covered by water for a year which destroyed all life except that which was brought aboard a ship with eight humans. According to the Ussher Chronology, accepted by most YEC organizations the creation event was in 4004 BCE and the Flood occurred between 2349-2348 BCE, 6016 & 4361 years ago respectively.”

This is mostly true, but I do not stick firmly to particular dates such as those given by Ussher, but I am happy to use them as a template as a ‘rough guide’ to the timeframe. I do not though believe that the Flood “destroyed all life except that which wasbrought aboard a ship with eight humans” as it was only the ‘land dwelling animals with breath in their nostrils’ that needed to be saved, as those plants and organisms that could survive a flood did not need to be taken onboard the Ark.

Brian: Which is why I asked about a list of land dwelling animals that do not currently exist being on the Ark.

SP writes
“The Noachian Flood event is one that I’ve always been interested in as the claims made by creationists about his occurrence are easily tested by the scientific method. One claim that I’d like you to explain is the following. In Genesis 6 & 7 it is claimed that the Ark contained 2 of every beast and foul of the Earth (7 of the clean types) including “every thing that creepeth upon the earth”.

I will simply repeat that this gives the false impression that Noah needed to take every ‘species’ of organism onto the Ark, but this is incorrect as I have intimated above. Noah did not need to bring representatives of ‘every species’ as it was only representatives of the bird ‘kinds’ and the land dwelling creatures that breathed through their nostrils that needed to be taken unto the ark. This means that he only needed to take representatives of the amphibian, reptile, mammal and bird kinds unto the ark. If you check out the number of these ‘species’ living on Earth now there are only about 30000 ‘species’ of these, and many of these, such as bats, have many variations on the same kind of animal. So it has been estimated that there would only have need to be between 2-10000 animals on the ark. Perhaps you are aware that they are building a full size ark in the US at the moment to answer some of the sceptical questions that have been raised about it’s feasibility.

Brian: So then what is a “kind” are all carnivores a “kind”, what about all animals in the same genus???  What is a scientifically testable definition of the word that would apply to all instances?

SP writes
“Creationists also claim that all geological layers of the Earth were formed during this yearlong flood and therefore all the fossils in these layers were animals that existed before the flood.”

As I say, I am not an expert on this, but I would not say that it is necessary for ‘every’ fossil we find to have been laid down during the Flood, as there may have been local floods that created some of the fossil assemblages both before and after the Flood, but it is likely than these types are in the minority, and that most of the fossils are from the great Flood.

Brian: So if we take your statement as is, how would we know the sedimentary rocks that were formed before the flood?  Would we rely on the Law of Superposition only or is there another way to date these pre-flood fossil beds?  The ones formed after the flood would be easy, again Law of Superposition, but they would only contain modern animals I assume?  Would you agree??? Since you are claiming that one Flood that lasted only a year created all these (besides the aforementioned pre&post deposits), how do you explain Aeolian layers (some are so delicate as to contain spider footprints) mixed in with all the other layers?  How does this occur when the whole Earth is completely covered by water?

SP writes
“Taking these claims together means that if you can find an animal in the fossil record, it was part of the menagerie on the Ark and would have included: Dinosaurs, Pleistocene Megafauna (like Glyptodons, Megatherium, Mammoths/Mastodons), Acanthostegians, Ichthyostegians, Temnospondyls, Diadectomorphas, Captorhinids, Gorganopsia, Dicynodontia, Dimetrodons, Anthracosaurs, Cynodonts, & Pterosaurs to name a few.”

Yes I do believe that some dinosaurs were on the Ark, but as we don’t know how many different types there were, I can’t list them, but there may have been 100-500 different kinds of them. As for the other creatures on your list, if we assume that each of them were land living creatures that needed to be on the Ark, then yes, I do believe that representatives of their kinds needed to be on the Ark. I would suspect though that some of them will need to be discussed for other reasons as I am sure that you will want to use them to ‘prove’ evolution, but we can leave that discussion until another time. 

Brian: Actually the short list I gave you was of currently extinct land animal groups which I brought up as they (and the others I did not list) apply directly to my question below: “…why it is that we ONLY find animals alive today that are the most recent in the fossil record and NOT any of the other millions of species…” .  This is the real crux of the question, why would a worldwide flood lead worldwide fossil deposits that contain modern organisms at the top layers only?

SP writes
“the Law of Superposition & Radiometric Dating are used to determine the relative and absolute ages of life we find in the fossil record, which brings me to my question.”

As I am sure you are aware, I will dispute the accuracy of these dating methods, but since this is not part of your present question, I will leave this for the moment.

Brian: I hope when you “…dispute the accuracy of these dating methods…” you also will explain why alternative geochronological techniques using different materials all converge on the same dates. 

SP writes
“Given that there has been a HUGE variety of life that has existed on the Earth (as evident from the fossil record), that YEC’s claim that all the fossil bearing rock (even all strata) were produced during the Noachian Flood event, and that at least two of all beasts and foul were carried on the Ark that existed before the flood, why is it that we only find animals alive today that are the most recent in the fossil record and NOT any of the other millions of species that, according to modern science, date to the end of the last ice age?”

Perhaps the best way to start my reply to this question would be to clear up some common misunderstandings / misconceptions which are promoted in the books of most of the evolutionary biologists that I have read.
I am not aware of any YEC that believes that the life-forms which are with us today are in the exact forms as the ones that were created by God in the beginning. Any YEC that I know of, accept a limited form or ‘evolution’ if you define the word as ‘change over time’. This seems to be one of the roots of the misconceptions which are perpetuated by many evolutionists.
YEC accept both natural selection and mutations as real processes that can explain some of the variations of the different kinds of creatures that we observe. So we do believe that the original kinds of creatures that God created have ‘changed over time’ and therefore we do not deny every type of ‘evolution’ if this is how you define it. Maybe you should define what you mean by ‘evolution’ as maybe I accept a lot more of it than you think ;-)

To further address your question above, I only believe that a few thousand kinds of land animals needed to be on the Ark. I would also believe that after the animals left the Ark many of them had to adapt to new and unfamiliar environments.

Brian: Ok, so your opinion is that only a few “kinds” needed to be on the Ark, but I still would like to know why the most recent fossil species are the ones found current living and why we do not find species deeper in the fossil record/radiometricly  dated to be older currently alive?

 This would have meant that genetic variability, natural selection and mutations, lead to variations and adaptations in the populations of these kinds of animals.
I am not sure that there were ‘millions’ of species in the past, but many that are now called separate species, were perhaps just numerous variations on the kinds of animals that left the ark. When you mention ‘millions’ of species you are probably referring to the vast majority of organisms that did not need to be on the Ark, such as plants, insects and aquatic life.
Even within the 30,000 or so land living, air breathing creatures on the Earth at the moment that are many different variations of the same type of animals. Apparently about 1/5 of all mammals on the Earth at the moment are bats! When you also consider the many different ‘breeds’ of dogs there are, it is quite easy to understand that many of what are described as ‘new species’ in the fossil record, are really only variations of already ‘discovered’ creatures.
As for when the last ice age was, many YEC believe that the Flood may have started an ice age which lasted for a 1000 years or so, and this means that many of the creatures that are alive today are only the survivors of both the Flood and the different climate that ensued after the Flood. Not all of the creatures would have adapted equally well to the new conditions, and no doubt many of them have gone extinct since the Flood due to a number of different reasons, including predation by man.

Brian: So I’m still waiting for you to explain why only the most recent animals in the fossil record are the ones alive today and why we do not see those recent organisms distributed throughout the fossil record?

SP Writes
“Concurrently, why are none of the species that currently exist found in any of the other layers of sediments if they were all laid down during one event, the Noachian Flood, and, as claimed by YEC’s, all organisms found all sedimentary layers must have existed together before the flood?”

This is again a misconception, though we believe that the ‘ancestors’ of all living kinds of animals were on the Ark, we do not claim that they have all survived to this time, nor that they have not changed. We accept that many of the descendants of those that were on the Ark have not survived to this day, for a number of different reasons, so we do not believe that the animals that live today existed in the same form back on the Ark or before it. If you want to narrow down your enquiry to something more specific I will be happy to reply, but this is just a general reply to a general question.

Brian: I refer again to my question directly above. You must have some type of explanation for why only the top most layers of the fossil record represent the current flora/fauna existing today and why, if a worldwide flood caused all (or nearly all) the sedimentary layers we do not find any recent organisms mixed into the older/deeper layers or any organisms of those older/deeper layers alive today.  This seems like a question that YEC’s like yourself would have to answer to be taken seriously when denying modern evolutionary biology’s explanation for the same facts.

I have attempted to answer your question and I await your response to my last post before we move on.

Brian: I’m sorry, but I don’t see an answer to my question. Can you please try again.

SP

Q & A with Brian Tweed. His first question(s) & my response.

Instead of trying to keep up with an exponentially growing thread, I asked Brian if we could restart out conversation asking one question.  He agreed and both his question(s) along with my response is below...

Hi SP
Thank you for informing me that you are now ready to resume our discussion, and I hope that it will be beneficial to us both.

As you are well aware, reading discussions between atheists and theists of any sort on the internet is not always an uplifting way to spend your day, mainly, but not only, because rarely do you find that the two parties have much courteous or respect for the oppositions point of view. Whilst it is certain that we shall disagree vehemently on the subject matters, hopefully we can approach the debate in a manner that acknowledges that our opponent has the right to disagree, and we will not need to portray them as ignorant or foolish for seeing things differently than we do ourselves.

I know that your preference is to have a discussion solely about the validity of the evolutionary biological version of the ‘creation story’ as opposed to the biblical view of the origin of life that I hold, and I am more than happy to discuss the details of that shortly. I would though like to lay out some of my objections to your viewpoint before I ask you my first question.

I am off the opinion that the universe as a whole requires an explanation, as there is an astronomical amount of matter out there, (pun intended ;-) the simple fact that the universe exists at all seems to require some sort of explanation.

In my view, before this universe began, there existed a very powerful, intelligent Being, (whom I believe is now known as the God of the bible) that chose to create the universe, and at the same time, created laws to govern the universe, so that it can be understood by you and I, creatures that this Being also created. So, my view postulates that before this universe or any of the matter that it contains ever existed, there was a Being capable of creating all of it, and endowing it with the properties that we see in the here and now. Since the appearance of the universe from nothing requires an explanation, the bible I believes gives me a plausible one, in that God, who existed before all of time, space and matter, used His power to create it all that we can see.

You would agree, I will assume, (and await any corrections to any errors I may make in presenting your view) that the origin of the universe requires an explanation, but as an atheist, you reject the view that God exists, and therefore you reject this explanation of why time, space and matter came into being. In your view, (if you agree with the majority of atheists that I have heard give there explanation of why there is a universe at all) all of the matter that we can observe in the universe appeared suddenly, for some unknown reason, out of nothing. Apparently, at this time, again for no known reason, all of the laws that govern the universe began to guide the formation of our present observable universe. Since the beginning, which you believe was about 13.7 billion years ago, the matter in the universe has simply followed ‘laws’ (for which you have no explanation of), and the combination of these ‘laws’ working on the matter, over extremely long periods of time, have ‘created’ stars, planets, and the inhabitants of the planets. In your view, you and I are simply the product of unguided processes that have worked over immense periods of time to ‘create’ the complex systems such as the ‘fine tuned’ universe and of course the human brain, by which we can learn about, and make sense of it all.

In short, you believe that order came from disorder, laws came from lawlessness, and intelligibility came from unintelligibility. I don’t know if you think that this sounds reasonable and logical to you, but to me it seems like a gigantic stretch of credibility, and I don’t have enough faith to believe it ;-). But if this is what you want to believe, I am open to hear your logic in coming to this position.

I find it far more logical and reasonable to believe that the ‘fine tuning’ that we observe in the universe indicates a ‘Fine-tuner’, the order in the universe was the product of a Planner, and the complexity of life and life processes, is the result of a Grand Designer, which is real and not just illusory.

So, with that background for why I find your position illogical and against common reason, I will focus down on the area of evolutionary biology that I would like to discuss first. I will start with a simple question, which can be answered by you by a simple yes or no. I will then hope that you will follow up this simple answer with further details of why you agree or disagree with the statement.

Here are some quotes from the book ‘Why evolution is true’ by Jerry A. Coyne.

“For the process of evolution- natural selection, the mechanism that drove the first naked, replicating molecule into the diversity of millions of fossil and living forms- is a mechanism of staggering simplicity and beauty.” (Introduction xvii)

“The truth - that we, like lions, redwoods and frogs, all resulted from the slow replacement of one gene by another, each step conferring a tiny reproductive advantage – is surely more satisfying than the myth that we were suddenly called into being from nothing.” (Introduction xxi)

“Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule- that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.” (P3)

So, after reading these statements my question to you is:
Do you believe that natural selection, “the mechanism that drove the first naked, replicating molecule” through the “slow replacement of one gene by another”, is the process by which “a self-replicating molecule” has been transformed into mankind?

Brian 

 My response follows...

Brian,

I’ll leave your opinion on Cosmology and instead address the end of your post about Biology, but will say that I view your description of the scientific explanation for physical cosmology as a straw-man of the actual facts that the Big Bang theory explains. I think that before I can address this statement I will need to see you give a synopsis of what the majority of  physicists articulate as Big Band theory compared to what I perceive as your misrepresentation of that scientific theory.

As for your question about natural selection, no I do not believe that natural selection is responsible for humanity.  I know that Natural Selection is the best scientific explanation (along with Genetic Drift from Founder Effect & Bottle Necks, Gene Flow, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutations, among other mechanisms) for the fact of the diversity of life found today and in the fossil record. I do not accept upon faith (believe) what others have told me about how life on this planet has changed over time, but instead I have researched the facts and explanations of those facts and understand that Evolutionary Biology is the best account for the fact of common descent with modification. 

Yours,

SP