Let's see some evidence
 

If you have links to resources which describe certifiable, physical evidence FOR creationism, please post it here.

Go on.

Not necessarily creationism but a site that argues for intelligent design.

http://www.arn.org/

hahahaha here we go.....welcome to the party

how did I know it was going to be about creationism just from the topic

There's a school district here in southern PA that has just decided to include this intelligent design nonsense as part of the school curriculum.

Enough with this "Evolution is just a theory" crap. Evolution is a scientific fact. That doesn't mean it's 100% right all of the time; rather that makes it available for changes as new evidence comes to light, but it's currently the best idea we have. Religion was a great working theory 2000 years ago when everybody was afraid of his/her own shadow, but it's nonsense now.

Science is a process that always changes over time as more evidence is collected.
Religion is dogmatic superstition that can never be verified and seldom changes.

Give it up.

Duck and Cover!

*dives behind the edit button*

INCOMING!!!!!

I believe the OP asked for actual evidence.

God of the Gaps arguments do not constitute evidence.

Anyone else hear the crickets chirping away?

What do you mean? Its right there in the bible! Then later on it says its ok to kill every man woman and child of another nation, take their virgins and posessions for yourself, and enslave any remaining survivors. (Numbers 31) Don't you people know anything? sheesh... :crazy:

So, you demand absolute evidence to believe in something? I hope you never get into a serious relationship. . .

Evidence is for n00bs.

yes. if I said I had 3 testicles you'd want a picture of it to see it to believe it, depending on which way you swing

Actually, I'd take your word for it. At that point, I figure if I was gay and was in a relationship with you I'd find out sooner or later. Since I'm straight I'd never really care to find out if you were lying or not.

But why would you lie about having three testicles? Most people lie about things like my penis is 10 inches long or I've screwed every girl I've met including all my babysitters.

Using that as a metaphor for religion, there are some religious claims that can be determined probably not true. But I believe that there is something beyond the physical in this world. I don't see why science can not be applied to all things metaphysical as well as physical.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie contact when Ellie tells Palmer that in order for her to believe in God, she needed some kind of verifiable proof.

Palmer - "Proof.. Did you love your father?"
Ellie - "Yes, very much so."
Palmer - "Prove it."

There are just some things in life that are beyond the realm of being rationally explainable.

I don't know if there's a God. I am not naive enough to believe that one day I'll be able to know for certain whether he is there or not.

In a related note, I've become more and more fascinated with the subject of ghosts. If they actually do exists, it would pretty much prove substance dualism is real and would therefore legitimize the idea that a higher power might just be at work!

:thumbsup:

Both the Porsche and the Volkswagen have a rear mounted air cooled engine, yadda yadda [many other similarities].
So why would a "car for the people" commissioned by the Nazis share so much in common with a sports car?

They have the same designer!

[much blather about genetic similarity, a smattering of corrupt information theory, and a little bit of thermodynamics for seasoning].

I don't really have the strength to do it right... the argument is archived on talkorigins.org, so you can look there for the relevant talking points (and rebuttal).

Mmmm....virgins....

If it contradicts consistent evidence to the contrary, yes.

Well, actually you can show someone you love them by actions. Additionally love can be measured as a biochemical response.

Finally, we've indirectly observed love.

Oh, and also, isn't this thread about ID and not 'God'? I thought that's how creationists were trying to sneak ID in the educational door by claiming that the 'designer' didn't have to be "God"??

I see that as a different question then the OP, actually.

Yes, it would legitimize dualism, but not necessarily the idea of a higher power.

Then again, I don't accept dualism or qualia, so, eh.

True.

Yeah, but the analogy between cars and people fails because cars don't give birth and thus couldn't participate in evolution.

True that.

Some of the ID claims and arguments are difficult to answer - most of them however stem from a failure to understand the processes and lengths of time involved.

For example, the (pre)Cambrian 'Explosion' is used by them as an example of an argument against traditional Darwinism. The same period is used by pro-evolutionists (like Dawkins for example) to demonstrate the way evolution works in flat fitness landscapes.

I'm suprised no-one has introduced the idea of a fitness landscape into any of these evolutionary discussions since it provides the tools required to understand the complicit migration of entities functioning within complex systems from less to more diverse states. However, I guess we're all pretty much preaching to the converted here.

Using this method explains some of the sticking points IDists have with evolutionary theory as they see it, including the similarities between creatures (the Porsche/Beetle argument) the no-intermediate-evidence argument and the gradualism/catastophism argument.

I thought the point of all that was that people (and all the other living things) don't participate in evolution in any significant way, either... and all the grand scale things attributed to evolution and common ancestry are instead due to a common intelligent designer. So the fact that cars can't participate in evolution is irrelevant, as the argument doesn't invoke evolution at any point (except to lampoon it).

Cars don't evolve, yet still demonstrate morphological similiarities based on a common intelligent designer. Ergo, morphological similarities in, say, mammals could also be taken as evidence of a common intelligent designer. Cars not being able to evolve is the point.

Claim CC200:
There are no transitional fossils. Evolution predicts a continuum between each fossil organism and its ancestors. Instead, we see systematic gaps in the fossil record.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 78-90.
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, pp. 57-59.
Response:

1. There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil which is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they couldn't be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil which shows a mosaic of features from an older and a more recent organism.

2. Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.

Fossil transitions between species and genera:

1. Human ancestry. There are many fossils of human ancestors, and the differences between species are so gradual that it is not always clear where to draw the lines between them.

2. A gradual transitional fossil sequence connects the foraminifera Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa [Pearson et al. 1997]. O. universa, the later fossil, features a spherical test surrounding a "Globigerinoides-like" shell, showing that a feature is added, not lost. The evidence is seen in all major tropical ocean basins. Several intermediate morphospecies connect the two species, as may be seen in the figure included in Lindsay [1997].

3. The fossil record shows transitions between species of Phacops (a trilobite; Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil.). [Eldredge 1972; 1974; Strapple 1978]

4. Planktonic forminifera [Malmgren et al. 1984]. This is an example of "punctuated gradualism." A 10-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.

5. Fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia are very common (they are mined as diatomaceous earth), and they show a continuous record of almost 2 million years which includes a record of a speciation event. [Miller 1999, 44-45]

6. Lake Turkana mollusc species [Lewin 1981].

7. Cenozoic marine ostracodes [Cronin 1985].

8. The Eocene primate genus Cantius [Gingerich 1976, 1980, 1983].

9. Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change. [Ward and Blackwelder 1975; Pojeta and Springer 2001]

10. The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior. [Stanley 1974]

11. Gryphaea (coiled oysters) become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic [Hallam 1968].

Fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:

1. Human ancestry. Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking. [Richmond and Strait 2000]

2. Dinosaur-bird transitions.

3. Haasiophis terrasanctus is a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs. Although other limbless snakes might be more ancestral, this fossil shows a relationship of snakes with limbed ancestors [Tchernov et al. 2000]. Pachyrhachis is another snake with legs related to Haasiophis [Caldwell and Lee 1997].

4. The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but, unlike snakes, they don't have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards. [Lee et al. 1999; Tchernov et al. 2000; Caldwell and Lee 1997]

5. Transitions between mesonychids and whales.

6. Transitions between fish and tetrapods.

7. Transitions from condylarths (a kind of land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees. In particular, Pezosiren portelli is clearly a sirenian, but its hind limbs and pelvis are unreduced [Domning 2001a, 2001b].

Fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:

1. The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features which connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement which is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusc's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusc's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive molluscs, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia. [Conway Morris 1998, 185-195]

2. Cambrian and Precambrain fossils Anomalocaris and Opabinia are transitional between arthropods and lobopods.

3. An ancestral echinoderm has been found, intermediate between modern echinoderms and other deuterostomes [Shu et al. 2004].

Of course god exists! He invented referer spoofing so that I'd have enough porn.

As Fibrosa dutifully pointed out, a lot of these responses seem to be drifting toward the question of the existance of God. This is, of course, not the question I asked. I originally started this thread in search of the fabled "loads of physical evidence" for the creation story in the christian bible that was cited by one or two of the participants in that thoroghly enjoyable thread, "creation vs evolution in schools".
Once or twice the claim was made that both 'thoeries' had evidence, and was then followed up with precisely no evidence. I'd like to give everyone a chance to present this physical evidence.
I'm not necessarily doing this because I believe there will be no positive responses (ie: i'm not trying to prove a flogged-to-death point), although I have to admit that a distinct lack of evidence is what I expected. However the main reason I started this is that I'm genuinely interested as to what physical evidence there is for the christian creation story, so come on guys, prove me wrong! I'm losing enthusiasm for your side of the argument very quickly.

Whats this got to do with anything anyway man?

If you wanted specifically that, then you should have asked for that, leaving out "fabled" and the quotes around "loads of physical evidence". And leaving out the taunt "Go on." at the end of your post would have helped too. You were asking for exactly what you got.

The scare quotes were appropriate due to the fact that what was being refferred to does not actually exist.

Can we stop fighting and address the question? Is there evidence for Creationism? I don't think there is as I have never seen it. I think Creationism is far too involved in faith to have physical evidence.

So if he put quotes around it because it dosen't exist, why is he asking for evidence that he has already decided didn't exist? If he was really "not necessarily doing this because [he] believe[s] there will be no positive responses" is sure dosen't sound like it.
I was basically saying that if Lak really wanted the serious replies he says he wanted, he needs to unload his questions. With the quotes and taunt he is just going to discourage those who might actually go look find some sources to link to. I know it discouraged me from looking around the net for some links to post.

Fair.
Addressing some stuff:
1) The taunt was trying to incite responses, clearly it had the opposite effect in at least one case. My bad.
2) The quotes around "loads of physical evidence" were there because its a quote! The phrase was used by another member in the Creation vs Evolution in School thread. to be fair the exact words may have been "lots of" as opposed to "loads of", but these are not scare quotes, they're actual quotes. I shall look it up presently.
3) Yes, I (almost) expect no evidence to surface. But I would really, REALLY like some to. So in closing
- Yes, I beleive there is no evidence BUT
- No, I'm not just trying to prove a point.
I hope that has clarified my motives and my question and I apologise for not being clear in the first instance.

- Lak

Neither ID nor creationism are viable scientific theories, as they do not address how the mechanism for change occurs.

All either of them do is point to 'supposed' gaps in evolution and then attempt to argue that because evolution doesn't *currently* explain the gap that it will never explain the gap, and therefore by way of non-sequitor, ID is required.

It's bad science and bad logic.

Here is a question for you. If you don't believe in God then why do you care what creationists believe? Why do you need to try to say they are wrong? I understand why relegious people try to spread their beleifs (they are trying to save others) but why would you even bother with your time? Do you have something to prove? Do you feel that as long as someone else is out there believing that maybe they are right and that scares you?

If you want proof of God open your eyes. You will not see what you do not want to see. I see God and his work almost daily because I let myself see it. I don't deny him every chance I get.

Example: 2 Days ago I started reading a book called "The Purpose Driven Life" It is a book about God's plan for you and how to life your life to his plan. This book works by reading 1 chapter a day for 40 days. Chapter 2 is where I was for the day. The chapter was about "You are not an accident" Later that day some friends gave me my Christmas gift and this gift was a new bible. The bible was in a sealed box. I opened up the box. This bible has a built in bookmark so I decided to open to that bookmark and see if there was a message. On this page that I opened to there was only 11 versus total on the page. But it just so happens that one of those 11 versus was the exact verse from the other book I was reading.

Now you tell me the odds of this happening. Open to a page in the bible marked by someone else randomly (Probably a machine somewhere). Has the exact verse out of 11 on the page that was in the same chapter that I was reading on that very day in another book. This other book only has about 4 versus in it per page. Now combine that with the fact that the verse talks about things not being accidents.

You want proof that there is proof for me. If you perfer to use science to say that is just silly then do it. It doesn't harm me. Science is just another relegion. Remember science is always being changed to be correct as we find out it is wrong. The earth WAS Flat, the earth WAS the center of the universe. Science is great but remember just like all things you need to take it with a grain of salt.

Yesterday, my wife bought me a book. I opened it to a random page, and everything about the words on the page were utterly unremarkable in respect to whatever else is happening in my life. I bought a book a couple weeks ago... again, utterly unremarkable- absolutely nothing coincidental. Also, when I was at the store a few days ago, I didn't run into someone I went to highschool with years ago. I've also telephoned a few people in the past and quite expectedly, they were not just about to call me when I called them.

Though here is something miraculous... the exact same sort of thing happened to me, too!
I was a reputed atheist in highschool (though it was not, and is not the case), and I'd occassionally get cornered for religious/science themed discussions by this one girl. She was incredibly smart and her parents were super-strict Church of Christ.
In my opinion, she was using me as a foil to poke holes in her faith because she wasn't comfortable doing it herself, but that's neither here nor there. Occassionally, she'd invite me to her church and ask me what I thought about it afterwards. So it was pretty friendly as far as adversarial framed relationships go.

I doubt the first book she gave me was "The Purpose Driven Life", but it sounds pretty similar as far as format is concerned. A few days later she also gave me a Bible and went through this little spiel about how she liked to open it at the bookmark or randomly, blah blah- which we did. Lo and behold, it was the same general topic as in the other book she'd given me. Amazing! Jesus at work? No, it was her, as she admitted when I called her on it.

Maybe they've honed the technique since then, or maybe in your instance it is truly a coincidence, but, if you don't mind, how did you acquire these two books? Who knew you had the first one? And why did you open a "christmas present" 20 days early?

The only reason you noticed though is because of the coincidence.10 000 people could of opened to the same page and read the same book and never noticed.

"I had the most remarkable experience this evening. While coming here, I saw licence plate ANZ 912. Calculate for me, please, the odds of all the licence plates in the sate of Washington I should happen to see ANZ 912" - Richard Feynman.

Because we think that Creationism is willful ignorance. Ignorance is everyone's enemy. Plus, you guys might be right so we would be stupid if we refused to listen. What's wrong with that?

It can be but it is not for most people.
The earth was never flat or the center of the universe, people just thought it was. Just because you belive a thing doesn't make it so.

Exactly so why does everyone believe science is the ultimate truth. Talk to scientists they will be the first to say that they are working with theories that constantly need to be revamped. They are trying to describe the world through observation but we are always observing different things many times we observe things that contradict what we found out then we revise our theories.

How do we know the speed of light? How do we know traveling at the speed of light is impossible? We don't. For the longest time the atom was the smallest possible building block but now we find out it is quarks. How long until we find something smaller than quarks?

If you are asking for concreate proof of anything you might want to stick to I think therefore I am because beyond that nothing is certain.

Most proof for creationism that I have seen has basically been along the lines of ruling out other possibilities, leaving intelligent design as the remaining possibility. Therefore, I would accept the original link the 'evidence' pile. The remaining evidence is indeed the Bible, which does not satisfy scientists as there is no known litmus test for its truth or falsehood.

Pure creationism is nearly impossible to defend, as a 7 day-long creation would not leave the fossil record as it is.

'Guided' evolution actually works better with current data than pure evolution, as it sidesteps problems from gaps and why would sexual animals ever come into existence when that mutation would require a creature of the same species and opposite gender (interesting mutation!) to reproduce.

I personally believe in a higher power who had a hand in creation, but from the fossil record it looks like He must have done it over a long period of time.

You're confusing sexual reproduction with sexual dimorphism. Two genders are not a prerequisite to sexual reproduction, merely a way by which to exchange/combine genetic material.