Setanta wrote:I've been away for most of the last 36 hours--does this mean "real life" has yet to answer the very simple question i've posed?
It is worth noting that many, many pages ago i stated that i was willing to stipulate that there are those who believe a deity created the world who nevertheless are able to accept the assumption that the current diversity of life on this planet is a product of the evolution of life forms, of descent with modification from common ancestors.
So, essentially, cosmic origins, the question of whether or not a deity created the world, is nor pertinent to the issue of the reason for the diversity of life forms on this planet. However, it would be very much to the point of this thread to know whether or not "real life" asserts that the present diversity of life forms is a product of a direct creation of those life forms in situ. This is the question upon which i suspect he is attempting to avoid taking a stance.
Let's remind ourselves of what your question actually consisted of, in many of it's incarnations
Setanta wrote:So, do you assert that a creation is a better alternative to a theory of evolution....?
Your question asked if I favored creation or evolution. Of course part and parcel of the idea of creation is the origin of the cosmos, including planet Earth.
But suddenly, you don't want to talk about ANYTHING related to creation unless it goes the direction you want to go.
I have given several instances where a good BBer/evolutionist such as yourself has a grand opportunity to let your little light shine and show everyone what you know. What a wasted opportunity. You have completely fumbled it.
We'll let you have another go, however, in the interests of fairness.
The idea of creation/ID is simply put , that natural processes do not alone account for the universe, including our solar system, our world, life on it, etc.
The planets of our solar system, for instance, give evidence that their formation was probably not consistent with the Big Bang/ planetary evolution thesis. The rotation of several of the planets is not consistent with the others and mitigates against them all having been spun out into their orbits by such processes as are currently postulated.
In addition, the magnetic fields of the planets introduce some problems. Earth's magnetic field, in particular, is decaying at a rate that indicates the ancient origin postulated by the planetary evolution hypothesis is not within the realm of possibility.
The dynamo theory which is brought forward to 'solve' this problem only compounds it, because the dynamo theory won't work for all of the planets. Conditions necessary to it's working, such as a molten core, have not been shown to exist, and probably cannot be shown to exist on some of the planets.
Of course, this type of thing, as I have admitted from the outset, is merely circumstantial evidence favoring creation. It is not direct evidence, nor is it to be considered in and of itself conclusive of the idea of creation.
However if the Earth cannot be shown to be in the neighborhood of 6 billion years old , then all bets are off, are they not?
An age of the Earth , even in the hundreds of millions of years instead of billions, would completely wipe out any idea of evolution by random chance having brought forth man from mere molecules. I am sure all would at least agree that this is so.
Not interested in the planets? OK, here's some interesting math for you. If humans have existed for only about a couple million years as postulated and the population growth rate were a paltry 0.01% (far below the rate needed to sustain a population) then how many humans would there be today?
You have a most unusual image of God.
