Thread: Creation 'Science' Made Easy

Originally Posted by sycld

Nevermind. We're just debating what we mean by "coexistence" and "contradictory"; we're not in disagreement on this point.

Yay! Time for a celebratory orgy.

Originally Posted by sycld

Well, regardless of the debate you and Mr. E have been having, there's nothing in science that definitively rules out a higher intelligence behind it all. I haven't the slightest clue where you get that impression.

I think what he means is that it's unscientific to accept belief in something when there's no supporting evidence for it.

Originally Posted by MrShrike

This is basically the same question as which came first: the chicken or the egg.

The answer is, of course, the egg.

Once upon a time, there was a creature that was not quite a chicken and from that not-quite-chicken came a thing which was without a doubt an egg. That egg hatched and the creature that emerged was what we call a chicken.

The reason why we can say this is because a chicken and an egg are both things we can define. So we can point at some thing and say, yes that it a egg or no it isn't etc. Or similarly, yes that is a human being, or no it isn't. We can argue and quibble forever and a day with each other over the exact definition you want to use, but the fact is, if you have a word for it, that word has a definition, and historical entities either fit (or fitted) that definition or they don't/didn't. This is true even if you don't know if a given specimen fitted that definition or not, so we don't have to know exactly WHICH chicken egg was first, to know that there was a first chicken egg, or that the egg came before the chicken.

I had this in mind when I wrote that.

A chicken is a creature which fits a certain biological profile. A human, similarly. A human, then, is presumably something with a sufficiently similar biological profile to ours, but I'm saying that there is probably more difference between the biological profiles of whatever "first human" you want to identify and us than there would have been between those first humans and the previous generation.

I don't know how to say this succinctly and I'm not all that comfortable with the terminology, so am I making any sense?

Originally Posted by gwahir

I had this in mind when I wrote that.

A chicken is a creature which fits a certain biological profile. A human, similarly. A human, then, is presumably something with a sufficiently similar biological profile to ours, but I'm saying that there is probably more difference between the biological profiles of whatever "first human" you want to identify and us than there would have been between those first humans and the previous generation.

I don't know how to say this succinctly and I'm not all that comfortable with the terminology, so am I making any sense?

Sure, I get what you're saying. But I don't think that this actually makes a difference. The first human is still the first human, because they were the first creature to fit the (chosen) definition. For more on why, see my response to Syme's objection below.

Originally Posted by Syme

When it comes to speciation, this explanation isn't really correct. Speciation is too gradual a process for us to be able to say that the chicken OR the egg came first. The transition from "not-quite-a-chicken" to "definitely a chicken" took more than one generation. There would have been multiple generations where breeding between a modern chicken and the "proto-chicken" from those generations would have had a chance of producing fertile offspring, but wouldn't have reliably done so (and the chance would have increased over time as the population in question became more and more closely related to modern chickens). There wouldn't have been a single generation where you could say "this creature is definitely a chicken but it's parents definitely weren't quite chickens, so the egg came first".

No I don't accept this is correct. I understand your point about speciation, but we're not talking about species, we're talking about individuals. Basically, what we're doing is looking at each individual creature in the evolution of the modern chicken and saying "does THIS individual meet the definition of chicken". Then we're finding the first individual that met this definition. Unless we include "is fertile" in that definition (which I don't think we should, given that a modern chicken that is infertile is still a chicken), the fertility of our first chicken candidate, and whether or not it contributed it's own offspring to the general evolution of the species from not-chicken to chicken is actually irrelevant. There is similarly also no requirement that any offspring it did have needed to be chickens either. Taking into account how evolution of a species actually works, it's just as likely that any offspring our first chicken may had have were not-chickens as well.

Originally Posted by MrShrike

No I don't accept this is correct. I understand your point about speciation, but we're not talking about species, we're talking about individuals. Basically, what we're doing is looking at each individual creature in the evolution of the modern chicken and saying "does THIS individual meet the definition of chicken". Then we're finding the first individual that met this definition. Unless we include "is fertile" in that definition (which I don't think we should, given that a modern chicken that is infertile is still a chicken), the fertility of our first chicken candidate, and whether or not it contributed it's own offspring to the general evolution of the species from not-chicken to chicken is actually irrelevant. There is similarly also no requirement that any offspring it did have needed to be chickens either. Taking into account how evolution of a species actually works, it's just as likely that any offspring our first chicken may had have were not-chickens as well.

My explanation WAS talking about individuals; I am saying that if you look at all the individual organisms in the evolutionary history of the modern chicken, you are never going to find a situation where there's a creature that definitively isn't a member of the modern species, laying an egg that hatches into a creature that definitively is a member of the modern species. I had assumed that the definition of "chicken" was "a member of the species G. gallus. If that's not your definition of chicken, then what is?

Originally Posted by sycld

... there's nothing in science that definitively rules out a higher intelligence behind it all. I haven't the slightest clue where you get that impression.

(Well, nothing that we know of, anyway.) But certain scientific principles do conflict with the idea of a creator, which I said earlier.

Originally Posted by gwahir

(Well, nothing that we know of, anyway.) But certain scientific principles do conflict with the idea of a creator, which I said earlier.

I can only think of one, and it is pretty complex and a bit of a stretch even. Please elaborate.

Originally Posted by Syme

The scientific principle that knowledge comes from observation of phenomena, and that the best explanation for something is the one that best fits the observed evidence. Belief in a creator flies in the face of this principle.

That principle isn't absolute though (as we often observe phenomena without full knowledge of all forces in action, be it whether it is a force we don't fully understand, a force which we mislabel as another force, or a force we don't know about at all), I was looking more for a specific law or theory.

I mean, arguments can be made using thermodynamic entropy, but gwahir said 'simple scientific principles' can refute the existence of a creator, and thermodynamic entropy isn't exactly simple.

Originally Posted by Mr. E

That principle isn't absolute though (as we often observe phenomena without full knowledge of all forces in action, be it whether it is a force we don't fully understand, a force which we mislabel as another force, or a force we don't know about at all), I was looking more for a specific law or theory.

I mean, arguments can be made using thermodynamic entropy, but gwahir said 'simple scientific principles' can refute the existence of a creator, and thermodynamic entropy isn't exactly simple.

I forget what it's called, so I'm going to use the term "backwards causation" even though I'm fairly certain it means something else. The whole question of who (or what) created the Creator. "He was always there" is, of course, a complete cop-out.

Originally Posted by gwahir

I forget what it's called, so I'm going to use the term "backwards causation" even though I'm fairly certain it means something else. The whole question of who (or what) created the Creator. "He was always there" is, of course, a complete cop-out.

If I recall correctly I'm pretty sure the is a theory on the nature of the universe that says it was always here. And if the universe spawned from the big bang there is no reason to think an architect (in this sense, since creator wouldn't make sense) couldn't have been banged also.

Originally Posted by Syme

When it comes to speciation, this explanation isn't really correct. Speciation is too gradual a process for us to be able to say that the chicken OR the egg came first. The transition from "not-quite-a-chicken" to "definitely a chicken" took more than one generation. There would have been multiple generations where breeding between a modern chicken and the "proto-chicken" from those generations would have had a chance of producing fertile offspring, but wouldn't have reliably done so (and the chance would have increased over time as the population in question became more and more closely related to modern chickens). There wouldn't have been a single generation where you could say "this creature is definitely a chicken but it's parents definitely weren't quite chickens, so the egg came first".

Either way, whatever was a chicken came from an egg. Being born of an egg is one of the defining principles of being a chicken, so to speak. Therefore the egg had to have come before the chicken, surely? (forgive me if I'm misunderstanding something or missing something obvious)

Originally Posted by simonj

Either way, whatever was a chicken came from an egg. Being born of an egg is one of the defining principles of being a chicken, so to speak. Therefore the egg had to have come before the chicken, surely? (forgive me if I'm misunderstanding something or missing something obvious)

No you are right, the egg did come first. Syme is just arguing the imperfection of the question.