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Like I was saying earlier, Nye won the debate. I believe everyone including creationists knew he would simply because Ham wasn't going to introduce evidence for the creation model. Answers in Genesis isn't about providing evidence, but trying to convince christians of the literal interpretation of Genesis. Nye challenges us creationists that if we have evidence, that he would love for us to share it, and that is really what should matter in the long run. The only point that Nye rejects, but shouldn't, are the statements Ham make concerning science in relation to the distant past. There is a great chance that there are things which were observable at one point, but are no longer observable. I mentioned a couple of examples using astronomy.
I did not watch the debate but based on what has been shared on here and FB, he pretty much uses the same counter evidence I have used. With that out the way, your last sentence is pretty much an assertion w/o evidence and you were not there really cuts both ways should that be an excuse. Sure there may have been once off comets never to return for eons or may be sucked into a distant sun. As for the biblical calculated time line, sure a star's light may have disappearance but none of these supposed events lends any credence to scriptures; pretty much a cul de sac whoever wishes to go that route.
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Now here at home (on the earth), we can examine things to a much better extent. All the lines of data does point to theories like evolution as an explanation for the diversity of life. Of course evolution definitely happens. Yet is it to the point of common ancestry? Different lines of study may point in that direction, but there could be another explanation as well. Yet some problems with common ancestry is the emergence of complex life only hundreds of millions of years ago. There are no fossils of the stages between single cell organisms and the fossils we find in cambrian rock. (Assuming the dating methods are correct)
Dating is correct and repeatable. cells are not fossilised and you are expecting this indicates that you do not understand palaeontology; I seriously doubt any of these folk expect to find a cell down the line.
There is a huge gap between abiogenesis and lets say the advent of evolution; figuratively speaking. One has no justification to insert god here as a place holder. The ToE does have ample evidence to reverse predict what it may find but evolution started even as pond scum. Can you rationalise what 4.7Bn years is like from your puny 70 or so years? I can't. A million is a huge number.
The cambrian "explosion" was not a single time event, that too took millions of years but in the timeline of 4.7Bn years, it does appear as a blip. They have already illustrated a string between two trees as the time line of earth and what we have info or history is like a few mm. No scientist expects to have detailed fossil record for every thing that happened in the past. Finding stuff fills in the blanks but only so far.
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Listen, if bacteria or other single cell organisms can be fossilized, then whatever is between the single-cell organism and complex life could be fossilized as well. I don't believe we have those kind of fossils.
We don't
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Also concerning transitional fossils between complex life, the truth is I perhaps could find a living animal today, that could appear as a transitional creature between two more creatures living today. So when Bill Nye talked about finding Tiktaalik, it may not be as convincing as it might seem. Perhaps I can find an animal today that has similar features as Tiktaalik, in that I could say it was a transitional form between fish and frogs. By the way, we don't necessarily know how Tiktaalik functioned. How it used it's body. In other words the idea of it being transitional, would imply perhaps it can do a little bit of both of what today's creatures do individually. Also secondly, if I were to discover Tiktaalik living today, I'm told that wouldn't disprove common descent evolution. (Just like if I were to find a living dinosaur)
Look in the mirror. You are a transition in the human genome. You expect perhaps a crocoduck. No one has ever suggested there would be a missing link. That was bad reporting and a phrase like the god particle for Hadron collider. Layman's articles in the press are dumbed down for the simple folk like you and me, it is called conceptualisation; in a nutshell, getting rid of the big words.
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Ultimately, all evidence we have does point toward common descent, but there are gaps there. (The Cambrian Explosion, assuming how extinct animals lived by their fossils, and the fossil record being incomplete itself) The main evidence we have for common descent is genetics. Yet like that old quote goes, "The night is still young"! Our knowledge of genetics is still increasing, and we may stumble across something in DNA that could separate life into distinct classes of different common ancestors. We are still mapping out genomes of creatures across the board, and still studying the genomes we have mapped out. Which includes us.
Evolution and my idea of multiple origins ending up as different critters and races is far more plausible than all of this developing from single pairs. It is pretty much established that the birds origins were the dinos, there are transitional fossils but again, this was not an overnight event, "overnight" in terms of 4.7Bn years, yes.
We are never gonna find evidence that will dovetail into the bible creation myth like you are inferring with the night is still young. That is a fool's errand. The whale has evidence of earlier land based origins so critters came out the water and other's went back to the water.
The critters recently discovered in the Atlantic at great depths post the robotic dives to the sunken titanic living around what are termed smokers, pitch black, no eyes yet emit light really puts paid to any claims of ID.
I think the answer you are looking for to get to where we are now as sentient beings, human and critters like domestic animals is never gonna transpire. This is a special pleading based on a strawman of irreducible complexity.
Look at Genesis this way;
Man observes that critters are pretty much lucky as they do not have to work to eat. Birds come, birds go (you can't explain that!) and the eternal question, why? That generates the fairy tale of origins found in the bible. We now know that birds migrate great distances, look at the humble sparrow. This side of the pond, trackers show migration between the UK and SA. That is an 11+ hour flight by 747 from Jhb to Heathrow. That aspect concerning birds is in Genesis and the NT referring to the sparrow. For the ancients it just was, they had no idea why - therefore god...
We can forgive their ignorance but for 2014, this mentality is inexcusable.
Put it this way, if the ancients had google, god would not even be a discussion point.
What is your society? The substantial majority of Americans are Christians and thus creationists, and the vast majority of people worldwide are theists. If you're living on another planet, I'd love to hear about it.
Here's a Christian disowning Ham, who he clearly believes lost the debate. He goes on about how he's tired of what he sees as a false choice between Nye's materialism and what he calls Ham's "selective literalism", but never clearly says what the third alternative is. Some sort of less literal, more liberal approach to scriptures, apparently. Interesting, though, because Ham was this guy's childhood hero.
I read the piece, and this is a thing to bear in mind - that the creationism debate is not a dispute between Christianity, let alone God as creator, and science, but between science of (very broad usage) evolution and the claim that the events described in Genesis are literally true.
It is a valid point, I suppose, that, if you start to disbelieve some basic parts of the Bible, where do you stop? And My old mate Eusebius over on the Ark thread (Christianity) made a very good point (Though I didn't say so at the time, of course ) that Jesus seemed to take the events of Genesis as literally true, Nevertheless, what I said, I meant (more or less) that there were ways that many Christians could explain why Jesus (though being God incarnate) seemed to take as fact events which they (as Christians) couldn't take as fact.
It is a tricky one, but the fact is that many Christians seem to be able to resolve that problem.
I can certainly say that I can have a far less rocky relationship with Christians who don't try to discredit science or misuse it to try to make Genesis -literalism hypotheses (it isn't even a "Theory" ) look feasible. I don't even mind if they want to teach the Bible (Genesis and all) in the religion -class; just keep it out of the science class.
I know what the objections are to evolution -theory; that speciation (at least one critter turning into another) isn't observed and evolutionary change is only within species (1) and that there is nothing more than speculation about how life got started.
That said, how (once started) it developed is shown very copiously in the fossil record, helped out by DNA and morphology. On the side of evidence for creationism, there is virtually nothing.
Thus on the basis of pure scientific evidence, evolution has to be taught as the mechanism with the explanation that best fits the evidence.
(1) aside from the lightning evolution of all kinds of cats, big, small and medium, from one 'Kind' of cat. With genomes like a neutron -star. As explained in Ken Ham's evolutionary Orchard.
Here is Alfonzo Rachel's take on the debate----interesting.
Why is that interesting?
This is a complete STRAWMAN!
That guys an idiot!
1) Atheism does not say anything in regard to Origins.
2) Atheism is simply a 'belief' that no God/gods exist as a counter to the 'belief' God/gods exist.
3) The irony in that statement is amazing since it is theists who believe in the illogical - that something can come from nothing - by believing in creatio ex nihilo - creation from nothing. They have been saying this for years now - years! And it does not matter how many superlatives you add to God since no matter how powerful he is there is still no way he can affect 'nothing.' Explain that one?
This just shows me that certain people have about as much sense and critical thinking skills as a gnat.
I have always wonder what idiot wrote that. Thanks for the information.
Why is that interesting?
This is a complete STRAWMAN!
That guys an idiot!
1) Atheism does not say anything in regard to Origins.
2) Atheism is simply a 'belief' that no God/gods exist as a counter to the 'belief' God/gods exist.
3) The irony in that statement is amazing since it is theists who believe in the illogical - that something can come from nothing - by believing in creatio ex nihilo - creation from nothing. They have been saying this for years now - years! And it does not matter how many superlatives you add to God since no matter how powerful he is there is still no way he can affect 'nothing.' Explain that one?
This just shows me that certain people have about as much sense and critical thinking skills as a gnat.
Actually . . . I thought it was humorous. One small nitpick, Shirina. There are those of us who believe in creatio ex deo. The Big Bang is essentially creatio ex materia. Both are apriori premises that cannot be substantiated. They represent preferences.
02-12-2014, 01:38 AM
2K5Gx2km
n/a posts
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Actually . . . I thought it was humorous. One small nitpick, Shirina. There are those of us who believe in creatio ex deo. The Big Bang is essentially creatio ex materia. Both are apriori premises that cannot be substantiated. They represent preferences.
I don't think it was meant to be humorous I have seen that before on posters and such. Actually the site for this is Liberal Logic 101 and they are not trying to be just funny - they are mocking evolutions and Atheists as well as anything they deem 'liberal.'
Those others are at least logical - creatio ex nihilo is not. And not all a priori premises or axioms are equal. The idea that God can do anything and that he is all powerful therefore he can affect nothing is completely unjustified as a premise and is only asserted to exonerate himself from this logical fallacy. At least you have some standing Mystic.
Last edited by 2K5Gx2km; 02-12-2014 at 01:51 AM..
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) that Jesus seemed to take the events of Genesis as literally true, Nevertheless, what I said, I meant (more or less) that there were ways that many Christians could explain why Jesus (though being God incarnate) seemed to take as fact events which they (as Christians) couldn't take as fact. 
