This debate needs to move from the politics thread to religion ....er science....one of them. I haven't seen Palin's name used in the last two pages.

Taltimer posts:

Since I agree with KFC and consider myself a Creationist I would like to respond...

Taltimer posts: #45

This is where you misunderstand the concept of Special Creation...of course the movement is about people who believe in God and in Creation according to God's revelation which is Sacred Scripture and (for me, a Catholic, Sacred Tradition.)

But let's start at the beginning where we can agree (I think)....and then look at the differences. Both Darwin's Evolutionism (Naturalism) and Creationism are philosophies that attempt to explain how  the universe and man came to be. 

Evolutionism central idea is that the science of natural phenomena is the only valid path to knowledge and that there is no need for a transcendant Creator God because such belief is regarded as unscientific and Genesis is mythology.  Evolutionism has failed to prove scientifically that all life came about purely by naturalistic "creation". If the science of genetics had been known then, the idea of macro-evolution would have been seen as obviously mistaken. The theme of descent with modification has failed Evolution theory and naturalistic evolutionists are still in hoping that the ever elusive mechanism (what I call the missing link) will be found.

 Darwin and his collegues Evolutionist Naturalist dogma became popular among atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists and the illusion of Evolution is very appealing and enchanting and helps keep belief in a Creator God at a remote distance.

Again, the concept of Creationism is harmonious with Sacred Scripture....basically there is but one God, the Divine Trinity, the Infinite First Cause, who created all that exists including space, time, and matter out of nothing.  Not only was matter created, but also organization of matter was created. Laws of nature were placed into operation by which space and time, matter and energy both exist and interact. What we know about God is very incomplete, but we are learning more all the time. This is very similiar with what we know of atomic energy, gravity, and the study of genetics. What actually constitutes living matter?  What animates the total entity of the cell? In contrast to the evolutionist idea of purely mechanistic functioning of matter, which holds that nature has its own inherent life-force, Creationism can and has provided a coherent explanation...that the Creator has impressed complex information into cells which can reproduce and pass on that info to the next generation via secondary causes.   

To date, true empirical science has supported the historical and anthropological events recorded in Genesis and Creationists endeavor to disern objective truth about these events. Creationism offers a coherent basis for understanding the earliest events and how mankind came to be. It takes in Almighty God's unbounded love and mercy. It's just as KFC said, Special Creation view accepts on the basis of faith in the revealed God, that Scripture is free from error and that empirical science will never discover any data which can conclusively contradict Scripture. I would add that man can know something of God and deduce His existence as an unseen Designer.

The Evolutionist view offers only a Naturalistic explanation of the universe and mankind, while the Creationist view goes further and acknowledges an unseen Creator God and a supernatural dimension of existence. IMO, since Creationism can explain such things as the existence of coded information, order in design and laws of nature, it can fairly lay claim to a more comprehensive concept of science than that of Evolutionists.  

We've seen through this discussion that the influence of both Evolutionism and Creationism extends to politics, sociology, anthropology, religion, and many other fields that touches upon the questions of existence.

North Carolina

Can you be a bit more specific?

@lulapilgrim - either you are ignorant (not an insult, a state of lack of knowledge) about evolution, biology, and science... or you are intentionally spreading those lies. Buecase you obviously ARE repeating the creationism FUD. There is very little truth in any of your statements on the above subject.

By saying that something is supernatural, divine, and completely unpredictable, it is no longer science is no longer a path to knowledge... Looking at how the cells work is a path to knowledge. saying "the cell works this way cause god is making it work that way" is throwing knowledge out the window and accepting it as some sort of an unknown beyond your ken. It is not a path to knowledge, it is a path to NOT knowing (I don't know WHY, it just does because god is doing it). Weather you want to personally beleive in it that is your choice, but schools should not even teach the option of "oh don't bother learning this, lets just say its supernatural and thus unexplainable and break for lunch" because at that point it is no longer teaching, and no longer a school.

A religious scientist NEVER accepts something as supernatural, EVERYTHING is created by god, thus EVERYTHING is natural. Thus everything is understandable and explainable via natural laws.. laws SET by god... No scientist has ever even TRIED to explain WHY the laws of nature exist, that is left either as a "just because" or "just because god did it". What it explains is why things happen by writing down the laws of nature. Weather god said "let there be evolution" or it being random chance doesn't change the FACT that there is evolution. Weather god said "let evolution change this tree dwelling ape into a human" or it being random chance doesn't change the FACT that an APE did become a human. (and that all apes share our DNA, and that all apes have two more chromosomes because a specific KNOWN pair of chromosomes fused in humans and so on)

Many of the examples of "unknowns" you gave are simply not true, they ARE known but claimed to be unkown by creationists in their attempt to debase science with lies. I am hoping you are simply ignorant of that fact (again, ignorant means lacking knowledge. I have been ignorant on things before, I educate myself whenever I can though)

My aren't we antagonistic.  Ever take a debate class? "Google it" is not a viable source of proof.  Are YOU too lazy to go pull it up to support your point?  It's YOUR point, YOU have to defend it.  The onus is on not on me to prove your comments, nor google.

And, to the poster above me - the reason the real hardline relgious people disavow all knowledge and science is because it's counter to thier beliefs - God created man from dust, remember?  We should all share our DNA with dust.  And woman was created from a man's rib, so she should have precisely the same DNA.

Also, owning slaves is okay and homosexuals must be stoned.  Oh wait..........

Ever take an english class?  You asked where.  I told you.  Then you said no it is not.  And that is debating?  If you had asked for a link, I would have provided it.  But that was not the question and instead you just decided to act dumb.  Ok, so go ahead and act that way.  And do your own googling.

And if you want a link, next time ask for it.

well as somebody here already said.....

OH!  That was you!!

God.

it does.  Not beings but dinos are mentioned. Hmmmm have you ever seen a cat mentioned in scripture?  Or maybe a poodle?  What's with the big deal with the dinos anyhow?   Are you trying to say we don't believe in dinos because we're Christians? 

 There were NO beings before the first being. Adam was the first man created so how could there be beings before him?

nothing is impossible with God or he wouldn't be God now would he? 

which is what? 

What are these, then?  Prototypes?

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

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

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

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

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

(I understand that Wiki is not generally the most viable source, but here it's a decent way for me to get all the information on so many proto-humans out quickly.  If you want to know more, there's always the references at the bottom of each page.)

In any case, each of these distinct species of proto-humans is different through morphology/timeline from us.  If we were created in God's image, did it take him a while to find a mirror or something?

Dinosaurs: My point with them is that there are generations of them - not a SINGLE day, as the bible would indicate, since man was created on day seven and the beasts of the earth on day six.  Since we've found skeletons of dinosaurs of different groups at all stages of life, from eggs to young to old age, this is a factual impossibility, sir.  By accounting for biblical creation as stated in Genesis, you are completly throwing all science to the side, science you can go to a museum in your nearest big town and touch with your owwn hand (assuming the guards don't toss you out - point being it's THERE, visually, for people to touch, not written down in a book, but exhumed from the very crust of the earth you walk on each day.)

I'd like to add that there is some scientific good to be found by looking into the possible existance of god - where Science and faith have the disconnect is that Science seeks to prove through facts, and religion through faith regardless of facts.

And now for a bit of copy-paste:

"It is commonly claimed by critics of evolution that there are no transitional fossils... Such claims may be based on a misunderstanding of the nature of what represents a transitional feature. A common, though fallacious creationist argument is that no fossils are found with partially functional features. Vestigial organs are common in whales for example. Also, there is evidence that a complex feature with one function can adapt to a wholly different function through evolution in a process known as exaptation. The precursor to, for example, a wing, might originally have only been used for gliding, trapping flying prey, and/or mating display. Nowadays, wings may still have all of these functions, while also being used for active flight. Due to the special circumstances required for preservation of remains, only a very small percentage of all life-forms that ever have existed can be expected to be represented in discoveries. Thus, the transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, but it will never be "caught in the act" as it were. Creationists often argue against this, claiming it is merely a convenient way to explain the lack of 'snapshot' fossils that show crucial steps between species. Their anti-evolution arguments continue to be undermined as progressing research and discoveries fill in gaps, and in modern thinking evolution is pictured as a bush of lines of development, not the simplistic ladder of progress imagined by creationists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx  Ever heard of this one? Or any of the proto-humans above?  Transitional fossils are there, we have them in physical form, and to state that there are no examples of transition from one life form to another is either an example of a lack of understanding, or an outright lie.

Or how about a transitional animal that still lives: The platypus! A draft version of the platypus genome sequence was published in Nature on 8 May 2008, revealing both reptilian and mammalian elements, as well as two genes found previously only in birds, amphibians and fish. It retains certain reptilian traits no longer found in modern mammals and also possesses derived traits of a highly specialized aquatic animal.

A transitional fossil for apes -> humans? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus.

Firstly, a concession: You are correct and I have forgotten my sunday school - god rested on day seven, man was day six, land animals five and ocean animals four.

Secondly, I'm going to have a listen to this vid - I hate to come into a debate unaware of a position.

Personally I think it has nothing to do with those things. However she isn't even competant or self confident in an interview. Imagine how that plays out under real pressure or stressful situations. She is clueless about what is really going in the economy and clueless in most foreign policy matters. The pipeline deal she made is going to fail and cost the Alaskan taxpayers more than 500 million because she doesnt even understand the energy industry. She made a deal with a Canadian Company without realizing that neither the US Govt. nor the Canadian Govt. supports it. Once again she is clueless.

astounding!

wonder what all them 1000s of ancient (like bce egyptian, greek, roman, chinese, etc.) crackpots--including archimedes, hippocrates, heraclitus, plato, the list goes on and on and on--would have to say about that?  

not to mention those more modern scientists for whom christian theology was a serious--if not fatal--impediment?