11.4.06

Rejecting Darwin without embracing nonsence

For those of you who don't check my recent comments list, I'd just like to draw your attention to an excellent comment I just received on an old post, from Lars Osland.

In the comment he recommends a website www.answersingenesis.org, and having given the site a quick peruse, I would like to second the recommendation. It has many resources, and links to other reference material to support the Genesis creation account and reject Darwinism.... without losing all scientific credibility in the process! The contributors to the site are credible scientists, and help cut through the unhelpful creationism pseudoscience to reveal the real scientific reasons why Darwinism is unsound. [Update: Having read the site in more detail now, it is not immune from dubious theories (see comments section). So for the record, I don't agree with it all!]

In particular he points out a link to: Arguments we think creationists should NOT use. Which is definitely worth a read before you enter a debate with a scientist over evolution. There are enough genuine reasons to reject Darwinism, but quite often "creation-scientists" do not help the cause by proposing theories that are equally ridiculous, or easily shot down.

I must confess to feeling quite vindicated, that one of the top arguments the site proposes against Darwinism is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There is a whole section on it. This is an argument I have been championing on this site for some time. It is a very basic scientific law, that Physicists and Chemists learn while they are still at school (A' level) but the inevitable consequences of which seem to escape many who hold PhDs in Biology! The second law means that the increase in order in the species over time needed to support Darwin's theory of Evolution (or the "particle-to-people theory" as the AiG site puts it - I like that!) is not just highly improbable but totally impossible! it violates one of the most iron-clad physical laws in the Universe.

Darwinists often counter with the "open-system" response as to why the second law does not apply to processes on the earth, and so sweep it under the carpet. But the AiG site has an excellent response which proves this is an invalid argument... if you think about it, it has to be an invalid argument! If the Second Law of Thermodynamics did not apply on earth, scientists would never have discovered it in the first place!


For those who are not of a scientific disposition, there are also some nice illustrations like the one below:

5 comments:

Chris Hamer-Hodges said...

Having read the site in a bit more detail, there are some things that I don't agree with, and some statements that I am uncomfortable with - I guess that's inevitable.

Specifically (just the ones I spotted):
* I don't think references to dragons in folk-lore are accounts of modern-day dinosaurs.
* I don't believe Noah had dinosaurs on the ark.
* Although I believe in a young earth and a young Universe, I do believe that the earth is older than just the sum of the genealogies in the Bible (because genealogies can be telescoped, not because I don't believe the genealogies!)
* So I don't see the need to explain away the 110,000 layers of ice in the Greenland icecap - in fact this number is much closer the age suggested by Genesis than the age suggested by the Darwinists!
* Not everything that points to an earth older than 6000 years is a Darwinian conspiracy!
* Some creationists fall in to the same trap as some secular cosmologists - trying to explain too much, more than can be justified by our current understanding. Sometimes the answer with the most integrity to difficult questions (like how can we see the stars millions of light-years away in a young Universe) is "I don't know!"

...with God all things are possible, whether I can explain them or not! There must be room for the miraculous in our understanding of creation, because it was a miraculous act of God.

Ricky Carvel said...

Actually, I do believe that legends of dragons are folk-lore accounts of dinosaurs, but that is possibly more to do with fossil finds than humans and dinosaurs co-existing.

Anyway, I don't find either side of the 2nd law of thermodynmics debate very useful. For what its worth, I think the current situation of millions of different species of animals and plants is a far more disordered system than the situation of simple single-celled organisms that we apparently evolved from.

The issue I have with answersingenesis.com is that it tries to make scientific statements on the basis of a non-scientific text. Some people take deductions far too far and just aren't prepared to admit that they don't know...

Chris Hamer-Hodges said...

"Some people take deductions far too far and just aren't prepared to admit that they don't know..."

I definitely agree with that. It applies to both sides of the argument.

Re the 2nd Law, I'd disagree. The multitude of species certainly has the potential for more disorder. Just as a 10,000 piece puzzle can be wrong in more ways than a nine piece puzzle. But when assembled it displays more order not less. More assembled puzzles means a greater total order.

Joel Gill said...

Hi Chris,

Just wanted to encourage you with the blog. I've just spent a while reading back through a lot of your posts and the discussions they've started and think it's fantastic. The stuff you're writing is great.

I particularly think the posts related to science, evolution etc have been great, and that your thoughts and deductions made are really well-thought out, intelligent, logical conclusions.

I'm in the first year of a degree in Natural Sciences including maths, chemistry, geology and also evolution & behaviour - a module I selected so I could understand in greater detail what the scientific arguments people used to support evolution were - it's led to some interesting discussions with supervisors/fellow science and even non-science students. I'm looking forward to following and maybe being able to contribute something to these discussions in the future.

Thanks and God Bless
Joel Gill :-)

(PS - think your tithing posts have been excellent as well!)

Chris Hamer-Hodges said...

Thank you, Joel. That's very encouraging!

All the very best for your studies.

Every blessing.