Is It Possible That Creationism And Evolution Both Happened?

[pdq1]

At presnt it seems you are either in one camp or the other and pour scorn if it doesn't agree with your own thinking. If you are in the creation camp the usual question is who created the creator. If you believe in evolution its difficult to come across crossed species and no plausible solution is given how man crossed the species barrier.

Wouldn't a better solution to believe there was initially a creator (god or otherwise) and within each species evolution took place to provide the variety we now see. The creator's creator could possibly be explained by negative time principles of which we know so little about as we only work in positive time.

[jim360]

Boson*.

I never said that they could not exist, merely that since these theories have made no experimentally testable predictions they cannot be regarded as scientific and are mere speculation. Not only that, but apart from String Theory most of the theories you mention are well outside the Scientific mainstream. While obviously that's not the be-all and end-all as many theories that are later shown to be correct take a whole to be accepted, in general most things that are outside the scientific mainstream are outside for a very good reason.

The lack of experimental predictions makes this a very different thing from the Higgs boson. That was a theoretical fix that led to a testable prediction (i.e. this particle exists and we'll see it from these decays), that has turned out apparently to be correct. Find me an experiment we can actually conduct to see if there are universes other than our own and then I'll start paying more attention to it.

[Old_Geezer]

The multiple universe theory has the advantage of being plausible and answering a number of otherwise unexplained issues without the need to fall back on saying that a deity did it. As such it deserves more than simply being laughed at.

Many folk believed in the Higgs boson prior to the experimental evidence. Had it been given no credence as a theory no one would have spent hard cash to search for it.

I'm unsure how any of this lends further credence to a deity's existence. I don't feel you are being clear expressing your point of view pdq. The terms you have used have rightly becme the focus of comment simply because they are stated without any explanation as to what you mean by them.

[jake-the-peg]

There are a number of different multiple Universe hypotheses.

It's important not to confuse them because they're not the same.

I've personally never liked the 'fine tuning' one mentioned.
The 'problem' is that many physical constants seem just right for matter and life to exist.

The 'Solution' is to propose a number of undetectable other Universes which have different constants.

I'm sorry but proposing an untestable hypothesis to explain an observation you don't like isn't what I understand as Science - it's what happens when you let a bunch of theorists go to the pub alone without an adult!

We don't understand how these constants got their values - it may be that there is an interalation between them and the probabilities of them being set at what they are is not as astronomical as they appear.

It may be that they are not actually constant but can change there have been some suggestions to this recently

http://phys.org/news202921592.html

As to the multiple worlds theory of Quantum Mechanics - again this is unprovable, it is a self-consistant 'interpretation' of QM which is to say it's one way of picturing the observations but not distinguishable from other interpretations.

This isn't actually quite the same as the many dimensions of String Theory. We're not talking seperate parallel worlds with seperate laws of physics and copies of the Universe here, we're talking other physical dimensions perhaps shrivveled up 'failed dimensions' remnants if the big bang only detectable on the very fine scale.

To me this sounds pertentially more plausible but again my problem with all of string theory (and many oth the other multi-worlds issues) is - 'call me when you have a testable hypothesis'.


But before we totally dismiss all of this remember that just a hundred years ago people thought the Universe was just what we now see as our Galaxy.

We keep finding the Universe is way bigger than we originally thought

But that's no reason for a magical creator

[modeller]

The major arguement in favour of a God and Creationism is that everything is so finely tuned there has to be a creator, but that is totally wrong because if everything is so finely tuned, it would never have to change,
or evolve. It would have been correct from the first micro second.
Yet we know everything is constantly changing/evolving. In other words God got it badly wrong or he/it doesn't exist in the first place.

[jim360]

There's good reason to speculate that so-called "constants" evolve over time, but so far none has been found to do so or at least the limits on change of a few a very stringent indeed, e.g. over the lifetime of the universe one constant, known as the fine structure constant, is believed to have changed by no more than 0.00001% or so (I think I've got this right anyway). So there's no evidence to support the theory that constants change over time yet but it's still good science to suggest that they do so because you can test it.

[mikey4444]

There is no God people...not a Christian God, an Islamic God, a Jewish God, or ant other loony tune...get over it !

This is 2013, not the middle ages !

[Old_Geezer]

And God has told you this as a fact Mikey ?

[jim360]

Bear in mind, Mikey, that there is the ultimate cop-out that can so far as I can see never be ruled out: A sufficiently powerful God would be able to set up the universe such that it gives no direct sign that He exists or not. So while I believe there is no God I can never no for certain that there is no God. Stop attaching certainty to this, then your atheism becomes just another religion preaching certainty where there is none.

[mikey4444]

There is no God and all religions have been invented, by man, since man first walked the earth. Christianity is just one of the latest inventions. New religions are being invented even as we speak...Scientology for instance.

My atheism is not a belief "system." I have had a normal, reasonably good education , so its just common sense.

I don't believe that the Moon is made from green cheese either, not because I haven't been there, but because its just plain daft. There are some people on AB that seem to think that it might, just might, be made of green cheese, because they can't prove otherwise. I don't believe in fairies, witches or ghosts for the same reason.

People may believe in any daft thing they like, and I would defend their right to do so. But an absence of belief is not a belief in itself !

Atheism is not a religion !

I'm not quite sure what some people find hard to grasp about that ?

[Old_Geezer]

What I find hard to grasp is why folk find it hard to grasp that atheism is a belief system. It's a belief that all the conjecture about a supreme being is definitely untrue. Yet one can never demonstrate this to be so. What seems common sense to an individual is a reflection of their beliefs and how they view reality.

[jake-the-peg]

Jim,

It's not an experiment per se but one project at the moment is looking for evidence of multiple universe by looking for structure in the microwave background that could be due to 'collisions'

Of course as with any observational as opposed to experimental science, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence

http://www.livescience.com/15530-multiverse-universe-eternal-inflation-test.html

As I recall some of this work is begining to gain some reasonably heavyweight backers - I think Roger Penrose is a proponant of multiple Universes and multiple big bangs

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/was-big-bang-preceded-another-universe-which-was-preceded-another-universe

[jim360]

Mikey, I'm with OG on this one. You can never prove or disprove the existence of God, though you can make a seriously strong case against it to be sure. Just have to accept that some things are unknowable, and that other people's common sense disagrees with your own.

@jtp, I heard of that and looked into it. Best I can make out the interpretation is disputed, but who knows, it might lead somewhere. I'm not really a cosmologist so will have to keep my eye out.

[naomi24]

OG, //What I find hard to grasp is why folk find it hard to grasp that atheism is a belief system.//

I can’t think why. To consider an absence of belief to be a ‘belief’ assumes that there is something tangible to dispute in the first instance – and as far as I can tell, there isn’t. There is nothing to ‘not’ believe.

[jim360]

... Or so you believe. Which is all I think OG is trying to say.

[keyplus90]

Who created the creator argument is false to start with. Because only created things have creator and God (the almighty and not Jesus) was not created.

Now to your question. I personally believe creation and evolution can go together as in my mind what some people call evolution, I call it ability to adapt given to the creatures by God. Then God does not only create, he shapes as well. According to Islam Allah is known by 99 attributes. One of them is "Mussawir", the one who gives a form or shape. It is number 13 in this list.

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Names_of_God


However Islam does not agree with common ancestor myth for man and apes as both have been created by God as they are.

[mikey4444]

Hear hear naomi !

To be honest, I'm not sure why I read posts in this section of AB, or reply to them. Some of the contributors are plainly barking mad, although they have the right to be mad in whatever way they like of course. Its a free country after all.

I'm signing off now as I can hear a feint yapping sound coming from the monitor !

[naomi24]

Jim, I don’t think that is what OG was trying to say. He thinks atheism is a belief system – but for the reason I’ve given, it can’t be. It is illogical.

[jim360]

Well if I've misinterpreted OG I'm sorry. My OWN position is that I am confident beyond reasonable doubt that there is no God, but not 100% certain about that as there may be flaws in my argument to get there. If so, I can't see them, but I can't rule them out entirely. So I'd only argue against certainty about it all either way.

[jake-the-peg]

Keyplus

//Who created the creator argument is false to start with. Because only created things have creator and God (the almighty and not Jesus) was not created. //


And you seriously don't see the problem with that logic?

Really?

How do you know that God was not created?

You read it in a book by someone who said an Angel told him!

[jim360]

If God was not created then presumably that means he spontaneously popped into existence (or was "always" there, whatever always means). But in the first case at least the fact that something can spontaneously appear means that there's no reason to rule out the idea that the entire universe can. Indeed since the Universe is less complex than God (who is after all above creation) it's surely easier for the universe to appear spontaneously than for God to!

The second case, God "always" being here, is harder to shoot down in a paragraph, but I'll think about it...