Experimental Creationism

I think this simple experiment should be taught in science class.

Students can then decide for themselves whether they think that life has been created in the same way (and as sucessfully) as shown in the experiment (just several thousand years earlier) or whether life has evolved in the same process as in the fruit fly experiment (just over longer time and with many more tiny changes).

I finally found a way to unite Christianity and Existentialism!

Hey, Kierkegaard did it almost 200 years ago, but I won't deny that I love the idea of the experiment.

 

Hahahahaha.

Hehe...

Article tags are "fairy tales" and "religion" and Google chose a Scientology ad for it!

 

 

Incidentally, for the last few months I have been getting lots of spam from Scientology (signed by them) to my gmail account in Hebrew!

It was something about "it starts in the head" with pictures of Einstein. It's very pro-Isral but nevertheless deeply disturbing and ridiculous.

ok to be fair you need

1.  A lab with no life in it.

2.  No God

3.  A way to observe the process.  You can use a camera or a video camera.

Good Luck!  You're going to need it.

Thank God we creationists have God. 

 

What would that experiment show? Atheistic Creation? Don't tell me you want to teach another "theory" which cannot be demonstrated in an experiment!




Really? So bring your god on then.

Evolution says that animals can change over time through natural selection. You can observe the process in a lab.

I don't know what your no life/no god experiment would be good for. Seems to me you can show neither evolution nor Creation using that experiment. (Perhaps you are now an adherent of atheistic Creationism? Things just start to exist without any cause at all? Still not a science.)

You know what? I think your "Christian principle" of "honesty" has compelled you again to pretend that you were never told that evolution is not about creating anything out of nothing. Fine thing that "Christian principle" of "honesty". Very useful in discussions, isn't it?

Could everybody please note that KFC has been told before that evolution does NOT claim that animals just started existing, does NOT say anything about the beginning of the universe, and does NOT make any statements about whether there is a god (or several gods) or not.

Good. Thanks.

If creationism were a legitimate scientific theory then abiogenesis would be the competing theory, not evolution.

Science can only ever consider naturalistic causes because it's the only thing we know or can prove to exist. Whether life was designed or not is at present irrelevant to abiogenesis. If all life was designed then the only way for science to show it would be to prove life could not possibly come about spontaneously and we have a whole lot of science to do before we can say that. 

All the evidence we have now suggest that it will be possible to create life from the inert raw materials. Once we do this it will be a good starting place to study whether or not the process could happen naturally. If we can show it to be impossible for these conditions to occur naturally then that's where the science of abiogenesis would stop, because it can only consider natural causes but it would change nothing for evolution. That would also disprove an alien designer because then they couldn't have come about through naturalistic causes ether.

So science could eventually prove the existence of god by ruling all other possibilities out and if we could be sure we were aware of all the possibilities, however it still could not in any way study such a supernatural cause. But if your waiting on science to run out of possibilities your going to be waiting a very long time.

Stubbyfinger,

Maybe you are familiar with Dawkins' ideas on how life might have started. It's been a while that I read the book in question (and I do not recall now which of his books mentions the idea).

Either way, as you have said, the beginning of life has nothing to do with evolution.

It takes a certain amount of honesty to be told and not deny it a day later. Which brings us back to secular vs. "Christian" principles.

I believe that honesty is a secular principle and that honesty is a virtue even if there is no G-d (secular value).

Others believe that honesty is a virtue because G-d wants us to be honest (religious value).

The problem with the second view is that once honesty depends on an authority, honesty comes second to that authority; and being dishonest to do the (perceived) will of the authority becomes allowable. The beauty of the second view is that it can make dishonest people honest (to an extent) if only they fear G-d enough. Some people need that extra push.

The beauty of the first view is that it assumes that honesty is a virtue because it is its own reward and allows for a better world.

But pardon my philosophical rant.


I will just remind everyone of the one relevant fact about religion:

"Religion is a smart man’s admission that he cannot know everything. Religious fundamentalism is a stupid man’s admission that he thinks he knows enough."

-- Moshe Wilkinson


And just to avoid a rant without insulting a sociologist:

"I never find myself marvelling at one of the wonders of the modern world, say a skyscraper or a mobile phone or the cure for a terrible disease, and thanking a sociologist for it."

-- Moshe Wilkinson

Fortuitous that today's comic on xkcd be about that very subject.

SanChonino,

Hehehe!

We've all noted it hundreds of times by now. Doesn't seem to matter. I guess Satan is erasing that memory location in her brain on a regular basis. He's such a mischievous devil!

I _hate_ that dude.

The main thing that creationist get wrong and the reason we have this discussion over and over again is that they see the immutable fact that science cannot consider the supernatural in order to function as being a choice to exclude God.

Dawkins outspoken atheist beliefs reinforce these false conclusions so while I understand his frustration over how he is villainized by religious groups I think he does more harm by not ignoring them. It also doesn't help that atheist beliefs are accepted by the scientific community because they don't conflict, while theist beliefs do conflict and are rightfully ridiculed if they try and merge them with the scientific method. 

Individuals can have a bias but science is pure neutrality and eventually truth is the outcome. Science does not have a secular humanistic agenda, it is a side effect of the only path it can take.

There is not even such a side effect.

Whatever secular humanism is, science does not endorse or deny it.

Whether G-d exists or not is completely immaterial to the question of whether evolution is possible or not (it is) and to the question of whether evolution explains why we have so many different species of plants and animals (it does better than other ideas).

Since Creationists think G-d is relevant in a field that looks for explanations based on reproducible experiments, they came up with "Intelligent Design", which removes G-d from the equation and hence, they think, removes what scientists won't allow.

Well, it doesn't work. Scientists do not object to G-d being in the equation, they object to unfalsifiable elements being in the equation. Whether G-d or a space alien creates the different species does not make a difference to the scientists if neither can be demonstrated at all.

If G-d's influence on nature could be measured and demonstrated, scientists would gladly accept G-d in their equations.

But as it stands G-d and space aliens are in the same bad situation here: they are presumably very powerful but cannot be shown to exist.

Dawkins' atheism has nothing to do with his scientific credentials. Atheists are not better scientists; even though many atheists, having not much else that distinguishes them from total idiots, believe that atheism alone is a scientific qualification of some kind.

Dawkins is villainised by religious groups because he villainises those groups. It's hardly surprising that they, he and the groups, don't like each other. But opposition to his position on religion has nothing to do with whether he is right or not when it comes to evolution.

Evolution will work and will have happened with or without a god. The fruit fly experiment, and many another, that shows how one species can change into two, works the same, regardless of whether G-d watched the scientists or cannot for lack of existence.

And the two populations of fruit flies, incapable of interbreeding with each other, will interbreed only among themselves, hence, over millions of years, create two quite different types of animals. And again that will happen with or without a god.

I can tell you here and now that I think that Richard Dawkins is an arrogant idiot when it comes to religion. But that opinion of mine doesn't make me reject his scientific work. I don't see how it naturally follows that since he is an atheist, I have to oppose whatever results he comes up with in a field that I know has nothing to do with G-d.

Atheist beliefs are just as conflicting with science as theist beliefs. You are wrong there. Scientists do not "accept" atheist beliefs and reject theist beliefs. Scientists do accept neither and reject nothing. Scientists reject gods as irrelevant for their research, but they also reject whatever an atheist can come up with as irrelevant for their research, if it is irrelevant.

My belief in a G-d Who does not interfere with the laws of nature He created does not conflict with the scientific method AT ALL. However, an atheist belief in space aliens (that cannot be seen or heard or perceived in any way at all) DOES conflict with the scientific method.

Deism does not interfere with the scientific method. Scientology does. The Catholic Church's teachings do not interfere with the scientific method. Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity's teaching does.

It has nothing to do with god or no god, but with whether you are willing to allow for a method that simply doesn't take your pet fact that cannot be perceived in nature into account when looking for answers.

Science specifically looks for answers that don't involve things or events that cannot be measured without denying that things or events that cannot be measured exist. They might exist, but they are not part of science.

And let's assume that the Bible is true. And the world was created by G-d 6000 years ago (actually, 5768 years, but who is counting?).

That wouldn't change a thing in science.

Because science would still research the world as it can be perceived. It has NOTHING to do with truth, just with facts.

And "facts", as the name says, are those things and events that were made, not the underlying truth.

The truth was made by G-d too, as one interesting reading of the Bible suggests:

"Bereshit bara elohim et"

The first words of the Bible ("In the beginning created G-d" followed by the preposition for a direct object: "et"). The statement continues with "the heavens and the earth". But the "et" is the part that I was pointed to recently.

The preposition "et" is spelt Aleph Tav, the first and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet (compare English A-Z). The reading here suggests that G-d created the alphabet first.

And what is the alphabet? Another Jewish legend says that the alphabet, since its first letter is Aleph, its middle letter is Mem, and its last letter is Tav, is symbolic for the "truth" ("emet" spelt Aleph Mem Tav). So the first thing G-d created was the truth, and the world is built on it.

(We can continue this game by removing the Aleph and we remain with Mem Tav, the root for death, which suggests something or nothing or perhaps something else or not much. It doesn't matter.)

The point is that THAT just now was religion and not science.

(And if you think that word games are not religion remember that man ("adam", Aleph Dalet Mem) was created out of earth ("adama", Aleph Dalet Mem He). That's a word game too, although one lost in translation, I suppose.)

You will also find that many scientists are Catholics or believing Jews who find no problems with reconciling their (rational) beliefs with the idea of not relying on faith to demonstrate how something works in real life. Similarly many car mechanics go to church but few of them would attempt to fix an engine by replacing the fuel line with a belief that G-d will magically transport the fuel into the engine. (It MIGHT work, I cannot disprove it, but it would be stupid to rely on it and reject the traditional use of physical materials for the connection (or demand that teleportation by G-d be taught in mechanics schools).