Warp wrote:
> 
> (At 1:25): "And yet many evolutionists would have us believe that in the
> name of science: There was no creator, no space, no energy, no matter, there
> was nothing, and then there was this big bang and out came the sea and the
> land..."
> 

I'm not sure I see anything in this quote which implies that the big 
bang is part of evolution.  The most natural interpretation seems to be 
that "evolutionist" is used as a blanket term which can be used as a 
label for one who holds a set of related viewpoints of which evolution 
need only be a part.

But don't take my word for it.  About 10 seconds of Google leads to the 
Conservapedia article on Evolutionism, which seems like a pretty 
reasonable place to learn what the people who actually use the term 
"Evolutionist" seriously think it means.  Here's one quote:

---

"Biblical Young Earth Creationists hold both terms in philosophically 
equal light, up to a certain point. They would say that the term 
"Evolutionism" has the same or very similar meaning to "Creationism" as 
it relates to a supposed philosophical/foundational starting point or 
question (does God exist?). They say the term "Evolutionism" refers to a 
subset of a combination of world views, while the scientific theory of 
evolution is the result of the Evolutionist presupposition. In other 
words, they say that Evolutionism is the collective world view behind 
the scientific theory of evolution. However, that's where the 
similarities end with Creationism."

and another:

"Some Creationists point out that they see various religious aspects, 
not in the theory of evolution itself (although they don't exclude that 
necessarily), but in the Evolutionists themselves"

And another:

"Evolutionism is a world-view, which seeks to explain every aspect of 
this world in which we live. It encompasses a wide variety of topics, 
from astronomy to chemistry to biology. At its core, it teaches that 
there were different stages in the evolution of our universe."

---

Now, I'm sure not every bozo who owns a blog or who can post a youtube 
video has bothered even considering these points, or learning what 
evolution actually is, but I don't think that sort of ignorance is 
limited just to Creationists, but rather it's just the sort of thing 
that you now expect in any argument on the internet.

Also, this marks the first time I have ever seriously linked to 
Conservapedia as a reference, and it is feels sort of strange.

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On 7/17/2010 11:54 AM, Warp wrote:
>    Why do creationists (with which I'm referring to certain specific dogmas
> rather than "christians" or "believers" in general) continuously confuse
> two completely different and separate fields of science, namely astronomy
> and biology?
>
>    You constantly hear claims like "evolutionists claim that the universe
> began with a 'big bang' from nothing" and such.
>
>    The so-called Big Bang Theory is part of the field of science called
> astronomy. The Theory of Evolution is part of the field called biology.
> Astronomy and biology are both natural sciences, but that's approximately
> where their commonalities end. Otherwise they don't have about anything
> in common. They are completely different fields of science.
>
>    It seems that there's a misconception among creationists that "the theory
> of evolution" is a catch-all term which encompasses, among many other things,
> the Big Bang theory, stellar evolution, abiogenesis and biological evolution.
> All kinds of claims are made about the "theory of evolution" which have
> nothing to do with it and belong to completely unrelated fields of science
> such as astronomy and astrophysics.
>
>    Of course "evolution" is a relatively narrow field of science (compared
> to the whole) which encompasses a lot less than creationists seem to think.
>
>    Another (perhaps "lesser", but definitely more common) misconception seems
> to be that the theory of evolution claims that life formed from non-organic
> elements. Of course the theory of evolution says no such thing. They are
> confusing it with abiogenesis, which is the theory of how and why life could
> have formed from non-life. The theory of evolution only encompasses *already
> living* groups of organisms, not how they became into existence in the first
> place.
>
>    But that confusion can be forgiven, as the subject matters are quite
> related (namely, how modern life came into existence). What is less
> forgivable is confusing two completely different branches of science
> which have nothing in common (ie. biology and astronomy).
>
>    Do they do that on purpose or something?
>
First, for the wackos actually making this argument, Evolution was seen 
as the "weak link" in science. The point wasn't to just overturn 
evolution, but every science *including* astronomy, where it conflicted 
with a literal interpretation of the Bible. This can be seen pretty 
clearly in the recent gibberish out of the Disco Institute:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/physicists_brace_yourselves_fo.php

The whole point is that **all of science**, from astronomy, to physics, 
to chemistry, and especially evolution, is **universally** wrong, if it 
contradicts their crazy assed idea that everything in the Bible is 
absolutely 100% true, and actually all happened 6,000-10,000 years ago.

Second, Abiogenesis is only not part of the concept because its a) not 
well understood, and b) not fully replicable, never mind observable. 
However, as I pointed out at least once, we have things like Prions, 
which, if malformed, quite happily turn damn near anything they touch 
into more prions, so its hardly impossible for simpler-than-life 
chemicals to propogate, on a massive scale, and be damn close to the 
base amino acids and other chemicals that *do* happen without biology, 
have been created, in incomplete, but numerous forms, in lab conditions, 
without existing biological organisms involved, etc. The only question 
is, when, how, and what?

Finally, its also fairly clear from some recent experiments that not 
even the DNA we have is *necessary*, it just happens to be the DNA we 
ended up with. There are dozens of other chemical forms that could have 
done the same job, and some early experiments with those have shown that 
a) they can be replicated by cellular mechanisms, b) they can code for 
the same processes, and c) something could end up having the same double 
helix, yet share not one *single* protein that we have to code for 
features *in* that helix. And, that is presuming that something other 
than a helix isn't possible too.

In short, the gaps they whine about keep closing, but the strategy goes 
forward. For them, distance galaxies "must" have all formed at the same 
time, they "must" only appear to be billions of years old, the dinosaurs 
"must" have all drowned in a giant flood, people "must have" lived side 
beside with them, all the evidence for an ancient earth "must" be a 
misinterpretation of the facts, and it doesn't matter if the science 
contradicting these things it the science behind biology, or astronomy, 
or even fracking origami. If it says something that contradicts their 
religion, its *wrong*, and must therefor be part of the vast Darwinian 
conspiracy, because "evolution" is the "weak point" in the whole mess, 
according to them.

Mind, this is a bit like trying to defeat a porcupine, or a skunk, by 
attacking its ass, instead of its underbelly, but no one said these 
people have a damn clue what they are doing. To them, since evolution, 
or their badly stupid understanding of it, undermines the most 
*important* idea of their faith, i.e., special creation of man, separate 
from all other creatures, the idea that it may not be the weak point at 
all probably offends them 100 times more than the theory itself. Thus, 
there is no other possible conclusion for them, other than, "Either 
Darwinism falls, and with it all the other lies of science, that we 
imagine are based on it, or we do, and we can't since God is real and 
everything in the Bible is true."

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On 18-7-2010 8:13, Warp wrote:

> 
>   (And, in fact, the big bang theory doesn't actually say that there was
> nothing and then suddenly something appeared. It just says that everything
> was initially compressed in a singularity. AFAIK there's currently no
> widely accepted theory about what happened *before* that.)

Big Bang theory says that at the moment of the Big Bang, time was 
created. Asking what was before is nonsensical. On par with 'what is 
outside the universe', 'how cold is -280C' and the one Hawkins uses that 
temporary escaped me.

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4c41fc71@news.povray.org...

>   The so-called Big Bang Theory is part of the field of science called
> astronomy. The Theory of Evolution is part of the field called biology.
> Astronomy and biology are both natural sciences, but that's approximately
> where their commonalities end. Otherwise they don't have about anything
> in common. They are completely different fields of science.

To be the devil's (or god's) advocate, why should a christian accept that as
a fundamental demarcation? Science may say they are completely different
fields, but religion definitely does not say so. For those accepting
creation as written in their books, it's all a single intervowen creation
event with god at the helm, and it's the scientists that are on the wrong by
compatmentalizing their explanations and pretending that they can make the
questions go away by designating it as some other scientist's problem.

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somebody wrote:
> To be the devil's (or god's) advocate, why should a christian accept that as
> a fundamental demarcation? 

For the same reason the Christians don't like getting lumped in with 
Hinduism, Norse mythology, and voodoo.

 > Science may say they are completely different
> fields, but religion definitely does not say so. 

Because if you're talking about "evolution", you should use the term the 
scientists mean by it, not the term the christians mean by it, because the 
scientists invented the term.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

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On 7/18/2010 4:17 PM, Darren New wrote:
> somebody wrote:
>> To be the devil's (or god's) advocate, why should a christian accept
>> that as
>> a fundamental demarcation?
>
> For the same reason the Christians don't like getting lumped in with
> Hinduism, Norse mythology, and voodoo.
>
>  > Science may say they are completely different
>> fields, but religion definitely does not say so.
>
> Because if you're talking about "evolution", you should use the term the
> scientists mean by it, not the term the christians mean by it, because
> the scientists invented the term.
>
Ah, well. That's simple. They generally use "Darwinism", which, with 
very rare exceptions, some of which are also borderline ID people 
themselves, ***isn't even the scientific term***. Problem solved. lol 
Well, except of the unfortunate fact that they still insist on claiming 
Evolution "is" Darwinism, but that is a bit like a Conservative, 
demanding everyone obey their mythology based edicts, (whose principle 
ideals tend to be, according to studies of how differently people 
actually do think, purity, authority and loyalty), calling a Liberal 
(primary focus being fairness and harm, with authority and loyalty being 
like "bottom of the list"), who advocates for careful consideration of 
consequences, the "fascist", because, well.. they *demand* that everyone 
ignore the mythology. Where, maybe suggest it is harmful, or imply there 
might be a problem with it, or imply people don't have to all follow 
it.. You know, fascist, gun toting, 'forceful', stuff like that. lol

But, yeah. In general, it would certainly be nice if they didn't try to 
borrow everyone else's words, mangle them beyond all recognition, then 
insist that *they* are the ones being oppressed by the people protesting it.

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void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Big Bang theory says that at the moment of the Big Bang, time was 
> created.

  Are you sure about that? The Big Bang theory cannot go back to the
initial singularity because there are no established theories which could
be used to describe what happened when the universe was smaller than a
certain (larger-than-zero) size. As wikipedia puts it: "there is no physical
model that can explain the earliest moments of the universe's existence
(Planck time) because of a lack of a consistent theory of quantum gravity."

  There's thus a finite limit beyond which current theories cannot go
because of lacking theories. Hence it's impossible to say what exactly
happened before that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> the dinosaurs "must" have all drowned in a giant flood

  Not if you believe Kent Hovind, who claims that dinosarus didn't go extint
at all, but there are specimens alive even today (and no, he's not talking
about birds, but actual cretaceous period dinosaurs). His arguments are,
basically a combination of cryptozoology, taking known hoaxes at face value,
as well as an outright conspiracy theory (about scientists ignoring and
destroying evidence because dinosaurs being alive would, according to Hovind,
somehow discredit evolution, even though he doesn't explain why).

  Btw, does someone know how Young Earth creationists explain what killed
all the trilobites?

  (Trilobites were probably as numerous as cocroaches today, and claiming
that they were killed in the flood would be a somewhat hilarious claim
taking into account that trilobites were *marine* arthropods.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> "Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
> news:4c41fc71@news.povray.org...

> >   The so-called Big Bang Theory is part of the field of science called
> > astronomy. The Theory of Evolution is part of the field called biology.
> > Astronomy and biology are both natural sciences, but that's approximately
> > where their commonalities end. Otherwise they don't have about anything
> > in common. They are completely different fields of science.

> To be the devil's (or god's) advocate, why should a christian accept that as
> a fundamental demarcation? Science may say they are completely different
> fields, but religion definitely does not say so. For those accepting
> creation as written in their books, it's all a single intervowen creation
> event with god at the helm, and it's the scientists that are on the wrong by
> compatmentalizing their explanations and pretending that they can make the
> questions go away by designating it as some other scientist's problem.

  If they try to discredit evolution in rational and scientific terms (as
many Young Earth creationists try to do), then at least they should get
their terminology right.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
>> the dinosaurs "must" have all drowned in a giant flood
> 
>   Not if you believe Kent Hovind, who claims that dinosarus didn't go extint
> at all, but there are specimens alive even today (and no, he's not talking
> about birds, but actual cretaceous period dinosaurs). His arguments are,
> basically a combination of cryptozoology, taking known hoaxes at face value,
> as well as an outright conspiracy theory (about scientists ignoring and
> destroying evidence because dinosaurs being alive would, according to Hovind,
> somehow discredit evolution, even though he doesn't explain why).

To be fair, AFAIK even most young-earth creationists think that Kent 
Hovind is a bit of a nut and people shouldn't pay much attention to him.


>   Btw, does someone know how Young Earth creationists explain what killed
> all the trilobites?
> 

I don't think there's really a standard and excepted explanation for 
this, but the most common seems to be that the flood resulted not just 
in water, but also in a great deal of ocean volcanic activity, as 
perhaps hinted to in the line:

"on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth"

Thus the extinction is attributed to massive water turbulence, changes 
in temperature, change in water salinity, etc.  I believe the thought is 
that some sea creatures (like fish and whales) were able to survive 
through this while others weren't.

It's also worth noting that in this particular case there isn't an 
accepted scientific (as in real scientific, not creation-scientific) 
explanation as to why trilobites went extinct either, so it's probably 
not the best example of a question to stump creationists on.

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