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From: Keebler@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Keebler)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: re: Why Creation?
Message-ID: <236@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 12-Apr-85 03:14:20 EST
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-e.236
Posted: Fri Apr 12 03:14:20 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 23:59:21 EST
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 379

___________________________________________________________________

> { from: Lief Sorensen, Hewlett Packard Co. }
> ...
>
> WHY I BELIVE IN CREATION:
>
>      So that you can know where I'm coming  from,  let  me  state
> that  I was born and raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist, and still
> am.  I attended private Adventist schools from  the  first  grade
> until  graduating  from a private Adventist University.  However,
> my graduate work was done at  the  University  of  California  at
> Davis.  All through school, I was taught Creation as based on the
> first 2 chapters of Genesis of the Bible.  I was also taught  the
> theory of evolution in school, but not to the degree as Creation.
> I would guess that in public school it would be the  opposite  --
> with  the main emphasis on Evolution, and then Creation thrown in
> on the side (or the front blank page as some wise man once said).

Your background is well reflected in your prolific essay.  Quite
commendable considering the lack of willingness for many to admit
the influence of their religious backgrounds.

>      Is it enough that I believe in Creation simply because  that
> is  what I have been taught all my life?  Is it enough that I be-
> lieve in Creation because my parents or teachers did?  No!  Every
> Creationist  and  Evolutionist  must eventually come to the place
> where he must think for himself, and analyze his beliefs.  I must
> have a reason for believeing in Creation just as the Evolutionist
> must have a reason to believe in Evolution.  "Daddy said  so"  is
> not an acceptable reason.

I couldn't have said it better.  (You can bet your life this agree-
ment ain't gonna last too much further.)

> ...
>
>      Another requirement for a  scientific  method  is  that  all
> preconceived  notions  must  be removed.  In otherwords, the true
> scientist must be truly objective -- this is extremely difficult.
> A  case  in point:  I believe in the all powerfull God of the Bi-
> ble, a God who gives life and  sustains  nature.   Thus,  when  I
> study  nature,  I  will  undoubtedly attribute many phenomenom to
> God's power.  On the other hand, the athiest as he studies nature
> will attribute many phenomenom to some natural cause.

You seem to be suggesting that everyone's preconceived notions are
invalid, when objectivity is concerned.  That is not so accurate.
Certain assumptions are valid in appropriate contexts.  In science,
the independence of nature is quite appropriate and necessary.  You
cannot explain anything in science via supernatural means.  (A sim-
ple example would be "God willed it to be so."  This is a pseudoex-
planation in science.  It may be valid elsewhere, but certainly not
in science.)

>      It wasn't too many centuries ago that everything that  could
> not  be  explained  by  natural causes was attributed to God.  Of
> course, this had the effect of making  God  responsible  for  the
> good  rain which helped the farmers as well as making God respon-
> sible for the lighting which struck church  steeples  and  killed
> the  bellman.   There  was a tragic side to this warped thinking.
> In the late middle ages, society commonly linked inclement weath-
> er  and  pestilence  with witchcraft.  Many believed that witches
> caused storms, destroyed crops, and brought on  illnesses.   When
> converted  to  Christianity,  people  began  missusing such Bible
> texts as the one calling the devil "the prince of  the  power  of
> the  air",  and  the Mosaic instruction, "Thou shalt not suffer a
> witch to live."  We know the tragic results -- witch hunts, burn-
> ings,  etc.   In  fact between 1550 and 1650 an estimated 100,000
> victims were condemned and sacrificed in Germany alone.   All  of
> this  the result of attributing to supernatural forces aspects of
> nature not readily understood.  Then, as now, for many  in  their
> knowledge of the natural world, God was a God of the gaps.
>
>      Dr. Harvey's work proved that blood circulates  continuously
> in  a  single  direction as a result of muscular contraction, and
> not by some supernatural force.  His  and  many  other  following
> discoveries  rang  the death knell for a whole vocabulary of mys-
> terious phrases such as  "innate  heat,"  "animal  spirits,"  and
> "pneumatic  force."  Likewise, when about two centuries later the
> chemist Friedrich Wohler  accidentally  synthesized  the  organic
> compound  urea, he exploded the notion that organic chemical syn-
> thesis was unique to life processes and was not open to  explana-
> tion.  These and other results were unsettling to many who viewed
> such processes as unique to living organisms under God's  control
> in  such  a  manner  as to be beyond explanation.  The result has
> been a swinging of the  pendulum  to  the  other  extreme,  where
> everything  must be explained in terms of natural causes, without
> the need for God.
>
>      So, after saying the above I must ask myself why do I  still
> believe in Creation?

That IS the question, isn't it?

>      My basis for believing in Creation is because I am convinced
> that there is a God who cares about me and everyone else.  Why am
> I convinced?   Because  I  have  experienced  direct  answers  to
> prayer,  and  have heard too many incidents of unexplained events
> happening to others also.  The experience I  like  to  relate  to
> folks  is  one that happened a couple of springs ago.  During the
> winter my little boy had taken the little bleeder valves  off  of
> each of my sprinkler controllers and scattered them around in the
> yard.  Needless to say, in the spring when I went out to  get  my
> sprinklers going, I was missing all five bleeder valves.  So what
> to do?  I could have driven down  to  town  a  couple  miles  and
> bought some new ones for a few cents.  But no, I decided to chal-
> lange (or ask) God to help me find these little  critters.   That
> should  be  a  decent  challange, trying to find these tiny black
> valves in the grass.  After praying right there in the yard,  the
> most  incredible  thing  happened.   It was as though someone was
> leading me around and controlling my eyes, because  in  about  60
> seconds, I had found all 5 valves in various locations, some even
> in the dirt under the deck.  I was very impressed with a God  who
> would  be concerned with something so minute.  How can I prove it
> wasn't a coincedence?  I  can't.   However,  sometime  have  your
> child  take  5 small objects about the size of your little finger
> nail and scatter them in your backyard, or toss them out the win-
> dow  with your eyes closed.  Then go out there and find them in 1
> minute.  I submit that belief in God must be based on  some  type
> of  experiences  such  as answered prayers.  If one has never ex-
> perienced God in their life, I reckon it would be very  difficult
> to  believe in him.  So until someone can give me a good explana-
> tion for what happened in my back yard on that spring day, or why
> my  daughter's  blood  problem  suddenly  cleared up (much to the
> doctor's surprise) after my wife and I had a special  prayer  for
> her, or why my car which broke down and conked out along the side
> of the road (turns out it had a cracked distributer cap), decided
> to  run  again  after my wife and I asked God to at least help us
> drive home, (I fixed it the next day at home), I have  no  choice
> but to believe that God is alive and definitely cares for folks.

Okay.  But this is a religious/theological/personal-subjective sup-
port of your belief.  You have not mentioned scientific evidence to
support any of your incidents, that, incidentally, still could not
have support anything supernatural.

> ...  (By faith, I mean the acceptance  of  an  idea  for
> which  little or no evidence exists).  However, it is not a blind
> faith, in that I see little things here and there  which  suggest
> that  there  is  a  God.   (Blind faith would be defined by me as
> presumption).

Here the Rich Rosen question:  You provided support for your beliefs
via incidents which you interprete in a certain way due to your be-
liefs.  I am suggesting that you have employed the exact circular
logic that Rich writes about in net.religion.  So, which DID you
begin with?  faith?  logic?

>      This brings me to my next major topic.
>
> EVIDENCE FOR CREATION:
> ...
>
>      A creationist should not be too hasty to think that there is
> no  truth to the theory of evolution.  There is considerable evi-
> dence for the theory of evolution, just as there is  considerable
> evidence for the theory of creation.  To say there is not a scrap
> of evidence for evolution is hardly justified.

That is quite true.  Now if we can only convince the other creationists ...

>      Suppose I come up with a brilliant idea.  I then subject  it
> to  many  tests, and I find that some of the test show my idea to
> be valid, and other tests show my idea to be invalid.  Do I scrap
> the  whole idea as worthless?  No.  I modify it a little here and
> a little there, and repeat the process.  Suppose that every  test
> I do gives me negative results, without a single exception.  Do I
> conclude that my idea is right?

Certainly not.  (I am assuming that that is your obvious answer.)

>      Creationists have always held  that  life  comes  only  from
> life.   In  fact,  this is why a creation is necessary.  All evi-
> dence points to the notion  that  spontaneous  generation  cannot
> happen.   According  to  Webster,  spontaneous generation is "the
> generation of living from nonliving matter...(it is taken) from a
> belief,  now  abandoned,  that  organisms found in putrid organic
> matter arose spontaneously from it."  In  otherwords,  given  the
> proper  conditions  of  temperature,  time,  place, etc. decaying
> matter simply turns  into  organic  life.   This  idea  dominated
> scientific thinking until 1846 when Louis Pasteur fully shattered
> the theory by his experiments.  Under controlled laboratory  con-
> ditions,  in a vacuum, no organic life ever emerged from decaying
> nonliving matter.  Today no reputable scientist tries  to  defend
> it  on  a  demonstratable  basis.  That's why Webster said it was
> "now abandoned".  No present process is observed that could  sup-
> port the idea of spontaneous generation.
>
>      Dr. George Wald, Nobel Prize Winner of  Harvard  University,
> states  it  as  cryptically  and honestly as an evolutionist can:
> "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task  to  con-
> cede  that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is im-
> possible.  Yet here we are -- as a result, I  believe,  of  spon-
> taneous  generation."  This quote taken from Scientific American,
> Aug, 1954.
>
>      Besides demonstrating the point that spontaneous  generation
> is  impossible, the above quote also demonstrates something about
> the faith of an evolutionist.  Creationists need faith to believe
> in God, and evolutionists need faith to believe in something they
> reckon is impossible.  Dr. Wald's exhaustive search for a  scien-
> tific  explanation ended in failure, as it has for all other evo-
> lutionary scientists, and he had the courage to admit it.  But he
> also  had an incredible faith to believe in it even though it was
> a scientific impossibility.

First, I would like to see the context of this quote.  Second, you
have made the grave mistake of bringing up faith.  A scientist will
have to abandon his faiths in face of evidence.  If I see your
point correctly, you seem to be suggesting that Dr. Wald is saying
that we are the result of some pile of putrid matter.  Poetically
licensed, he may say such a thing.  However, in a scientific con-
text, he is grossly irresponsible.  I personally think that you
probably misquoted him.  Spontaneous generation is not the same as
the processes of our evolution.  (Any high biology textbook can in-
form you on some important details of the theories of spontaneous
generation.  Just the basic time scale alone is completely different
from biological evolution.)

>      Surely, using rational and  objective  thinking,  one  would
> conclude  that  if  it takes a high order of intelligence just to
> understand *life*, then it must take a far  greater  intelligence
> to  design  it.   Thus,  the fact that there exists zero evidence
> that spontaneous generation is possible leads me to believe  that
> life was designed by some form of intelligence.

Once again, spontaneous generation is not the same as evolution.  I
am surprised that you still bring up the old design argument.  Your
subjective opinions on design is hardly scientific evidence.

>      Wald goes on to suggest that given enough time (say  2  bil-
> lion  years),  even  an  impossible  event  is  bound  to happen.
> Perhaps.  However; scientists still do not fully  understand  the
> nature of *life*.  Until it is understood neither the probability
> nor even the possibility of its chance occurrence can be properly
> assessed.   And  if  applied  to an impossible event, probability
> theory would have no application.

It is quite obvious that you have already concluded to some degree,
that life is beyond the understanding of scientists.  Other than
that, your paragraph does not provide anything to properly support
your assertions.

>      Let's look at another evidence of creation.   Obviously,  if
> all  life was created on earth simultaneously, then one would ex-
> pect to find such evidence in the fossils.  Descending  into  the
> Grand  Canyon for example, one moves downward past the Mississip-
> pian, Devonian, Cambrian, etc. geological stratas  as  they  have
> been tagged.  The Cambrian layer is the lowest or last stratum of
> the decending levels that has any fossils in it  (although  every
> now  and  then  someone will find a random fossil in Pre-Cambrian
> strata).  Interestingly enough, all lower strata below  the  Cam-
> brian have no record of life.  And yet the Cambrian layer is full
> of all the major kinds of animals and plants  found  today.   The
> life  forms  in the Cambrian layer compare with the complexity of
> current life forms.
>
>      This evidence is a puzzle to evolutionists.  Darwin, in  his
> Origin  of  the  Species,  states, "To the question why we do not
> find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed  ear-
> liest period prior to the Cambrian system I can give no satisfac-
> tory answer."  Drs. Marshall Kay and Edwin  Colbert  of  Columbia
> University  also  agree  with  this evidence when they state "Why
> should such complex organic forms be in rocks about  600  million
> years  old  and  be  absent or unrecognized in the records of the
> preceding two billion years?...If there  has  been  evolution  of
> life,  the  absence  of  the requisite fossils in the rocks older
> than Cambrian is puzzling."  This quote  taken  from  Stratigrapy
> and Life History, Page 102.h

Another creationist flaw:  You cannot easily justify using the AB-
SENCE of evidence as evidence itself.  Absence of evidence simply
makes the theory which depends upon the evidence questionable.  It
does not, by any means, support other theories.

>      Let's look at  another  evidence  of  creation.   The  Bible
> states  that  all  life  should  reproduce after its own kind.  I
> looked up the word kind in Bible concordance to see what the  ac-
> tual  Hebrew  word meant.  It said species.  However that did not
> help me any, because Linnaeus (who classified  everything)  lived
> many  years  after  the Bible was written thus it's doubtful that
> the author of Genesis new about Linnaeus'  definition.   However,
> it  is quite apparent that the Bible specifically claims that all
> life belonged to discrete groups, and would always remain  within
> those  same groups.  Therefore, if this is true, one would expect
> some evidence to verify it.
>
>      Again, the evidence is found in  the  fossil  records.   Dr.
> Austin  Clark,  in  his  book  "The  New  Evolution",  page  100,
> describes the picture as it appears in the fossil records.   "One
> of  the  most  striking  and important facts which has been esta-
> blished through a study of the fossil animals is  that  from  the
> very earliest times, from the very first beginnings of the fossil
> record, the broader aspects of the animal  life  upon  the  earth
> have  remained unchanged.  When we examine a series of fossils of
> any age, we may pick out one and say with confidence, 'This is  a
> crustacean'  -- or a starfish, or a brachiopod, or an annelid, or
> any other type of creature as the case may be...How do we  recog-
> nize these fossils as members of the various groups?  We are able
> to recognize them because they fall within the  definition  of  a
> particular  group.   But  the  definitions  of the phyla or major
> groups of animals are all drawn up on the basis of a study of the
> living representatives alone."
>
>      It is true that the fossil record is often obscure with many
> unsolved problems.  Nevertheless, the obvious absence of connect-
> ing links would seem to be in agreement with  the  view  of  many
> creationists   that  the  major  groups  of  living  things  were
> seperately created.  There is alot of evidence of change  in  the
> smaller  units  such  as  the genera and no doubt even in certain
> famililies and orders.  However, there is no clear evidence  that
> such  limited changes compounded would produce new basic types --
> categories such as the phyla or classes.

You say "limited".  I now ask you, "limited by what?"  You do real-
ize that the current classification system used by biologists is a
hierarchy of categories that help biologists analyze all known liv-
ing things.  Creationists do not consider the existence of basic
type unless there are NO in-betweens.  Thus, by definition, they
have made "kinds" absolute.  Thus, if there are people with noses
of all different sizes, then people in general are the same kind.
But if the people with the intermediate size noses die out, then
two new kinds emerge:  ones with large noses, and ones with small
noses.  This is a sloppy example, but the point is that with the
two new kinds, creationists will insist that people were separately
created as big-nosed and little-nosed and that people with inter-
mediate size noses never existed.

>      When it comes right down to it, species are  the  only  real
> entities  in nature.  All higher categories are based on the sub-
> jective judgment of specialists.  Linnaeus placed all the  varied
> marsupials  (i.e.  pouched mammals, such as oppossums, kangaroos,
> etc.) in a single genus, Didelphis.  Today workers usually  place
> them  in  an  order  (or still higher catagory) divided into many
> families and genera.  One man's "genus" is another  man's  "fami-
> ly".

There is nothing to justifiy your claim that species are the only
"real entities".  In addition, you would not classify a bacteria
with an elephant.  The classification hierarchy is not whimsical,
as you so suggest.

>      So, as far as the fossil  record  is  concerned  the  higher
> categories  remain  separate from the time of their first appear-
> ance until now.  True, the record is extremely spotty and  inade-
> quate.   But  among  the  countless millions of fossils collected
> from all over the earth, I would expect to find at  least  a  few
> "transition" fossils if they ever existed.

Refer to the last comment ...  The basic question is:  What is your
definition of a transitional fossil?  And what part of this defini-
tion will prevent you from considering the transitional form as a
separate "kind", thus creating two gaps where there was one?

> BUT WHAT ABOUT...
>
>      The question asked often to a creationist is "If God created
> everything  perfect,  then  why  do we obviously have flaws?  Why
> mosquitoes and pests?  Why man eating lions?"  The  usual  answer
> is that sin caused all these things.

What is sin?  (Scientificly defined, of course.  How about some
first-order principles that make up this entity?)

>      I too agree with the usual answer.  Again, since  the  basis
> of  my  belief  is  the Bible, my reason for this answer is reli-
> gious, and not scientific.

BOOM!  Your words tell it all...  I am going to stop here because
you blatantly admit your error (you may not think it's an error,
but it's inexcusable in science).

> ...
___________________________________________________________________

Live long and prosper.

Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }