Forums → WEPR → Evolutionism or creationism

Lets say we have two clones of each other in two seperate identical rooms.

Both clones have the same problem solving skills, intelligence, judgement, memory, mental sets. Why would they have different behaviors if they are put in the same situation in the exact same time with the exact same enviroment (besides location)?

Even if they have the same skills, intelligence, and memory, it is likely that they will have unique personalities that were determined at the instant of the cloning procedure, and thus will likely behave slightly differently. One of the things I believe to be required for the definition of a human is being unique from everyone else, and the only truly unique attribute in the case of genetic identicality is the personality. Of course, there's debate about whether clones can be considered human, but that's another issue. I'm also wondering how we got off the topic of evolutionism vs. creationism...I'm thinking one of my earlier posts here must have gotten us offtrack. Topics seem to go in all directions when I participate.

Anyway, my main argument supporting creationism extends beyond biology to the nature and origins of the universe, as you've seen. The simple reason for my belief in creation is based on the law of cause and effect. Since spacetime needed a starting point, and consists of time and matter, this law requires that if that Initial Event had a cause, whatever caused it must be independent of time and matter, being both immaterial and eternal. The only cause seeming to fit that description is God, since everything else we can see exists within time and space, and therefore could not have caused the origin of the concepts required for their existence. That's my whole argument right there; I don't think I needed to go into lengthy explanations of God's personality or other things to present that simple statement. I just tend to get to ranting quite often.

Neither are competely correct.
Even the Pope says that evolution could have happened.
I believe God created the universe as it is and everything evolved the way he planned from there.
There is way too much evidence supporting evoluthion. Creationists will lose.
Btw, the creation stories themselves are not important, only the message they send.

I can't say that the animals we see haven't changed over time, but some of the claims made about the radical nature of those changes seem unlikely, even given an infinite amount of time to happen. I don't believe it personally, but it's a definite possibility that God created the organisms and let evolution take its course from there, and shouldn't be counted out yet. What I would like to prove, though, is that God did actually create the universe. I suppose while I'm at it I can present another simple argument to support this belief. Consider the physical laws of the universe and how perfectly they work. There are many mathematical constants that determine the exact operation of these laws, and if any one of those constants were changed from their present value by even a fraction of a percent, the structure of our universe would disintegrate. Take the gravitational constant (G), for example. It is possibly the most vital constant value in the universe's operation, and if it were even a trillionth percentage different, our galaxies and galaxy chains would begin to fly apart or collapse in on each other. The probability that all the physical constants governing the universe could have automatically attained the exact values necessary to work properly together is astronomically unlikely, one chance in trillions. The simplest explanation is that the universe was engineered by someone who had the knowledge to manually set the values of those mathematical constants. The design of the universe seems very deliberate in many respects, especially in the setting of those values, which is just one more reason why I believe in creationism. You can believe what you want to about animal development; what I'm concerned with is the universe itself.

Alright bloody...

I see your use of mathematics, and I raise you logic.

Let's say that, in fact, that gravitational constant WAS different. Radically different, even.

What would happen?

Certainly not what we have today, that much we can agree on.

What WOULD happen, though, is a drastically different world in which POSSIBLY life could still arise, just in a radically different way. Since the beginning would be different, everything would depend on different circumstances, adaption would be different, life would evolve differently, etc. EVENTUALLY, we'd probably still end up hitting intelligent life.

This type of argument is often used to talk about how the earth is in some golden zone in which the sun neither cooks us nor doesn't warm us enough, so god MUST have put us here, etc, etc.

Complete wrong perspective.

The fact that we are here, discussing these things is the evidence that we, in fact, ARE in that spot, not the other way around.

Might be a little confusing...lemme try to explain.

If the earth WASN'T in that spot, we would never know it. We would have never came into being, so no discussion about why we would be there would ever happen.

Out of the billions of galaxies in the universe, we - along with quite possibly many other planets - happened to hit a nice spot near our local sun. We got lucky with some other elements along the way and BAM! we got life. We evolved, adapted, and in the year 2008, we are advanced enough to ponder our own existence.

Amazing, yes, but not a product of design.

Look at all the OTHER planets in the galaxy. They didn't hit the hotspot, if you will, and they don't have life. Period.

That's all that matters.

Out of all of the planets in our universe, some of them are mathematically bound to have landed in the right spot. Out of those planets that hit the good spots, some of them are mathematically bound to have sparked life. Out of THOSE, some are bound to have evolved in to intelligent life, etc, etc.

We happen to be one of them.

Well done, Razaki.
I really hate the cosmological argument that our existence is so unlikely that we must have been &quotlaced" here. The fact is that carbon is a by-product of every star (at some point in its life) and so its abundance is such that it's no wonder carbon based life forms developed.
As far as every event needing a cause - no. Take, for example, some offshoots of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. One of the ideas here is that there are particles that have a certain spin or a certain charge. The particle exhibits behaviors of both until it is observed, when it "makes up its mind." This exotic matter cannot be influenced by humans - we can't actually change its spin or orientation and yet its spin does alter when observed.
The point I'm trying to make is that causality only works because humans have a tendency to try to understand causes and will mistake things like temporal succession or correlation for causality (see David Hume).
We understand the big bang sooo close to its beginnings that our math simply doesn't work anymore.
The simple fact is we don't need matter to explain matter. Einstein seems to have proven that matter and energy are equivalent and the two states can switch.
But just philosophically, why do we need causation? Heck, why do we even need this universe to exist in the first place? Perhaps all of these human concepts: time, causality, and god are only tools we use to help explain events. I think we really don't need god to help explain anything anymore. We understand our origins and physics enough to not need divine intervention.
If believing in god makes you happy, then I'm all for it. But we don't need god to explain scientific principles.

This is a fabulous discussion! Moe you make wonderful contributions. Really getting my noodle working. I'll have something more informative later. I need to beat this hang over first.

The universe was created thirteen billion years ago. Earth has been around for 3.6 billion of those years. If there was an all poweful being that created everything in the known universe, and if that being really truly did love humans over all else, why would it wait for almost four billion years to make out planet and a further few billion to make humans?

Also, I do not care how powerful one is. Thirteen billion years is a long time to say sane.

Well, that's when our planet was made. Which I cannot see how anyone would think that we are alone in this vast universe. Don't we only have another 4 billion years on our sun until it goes ka-put? I bet we collide with another galaxy before then.

Devoidless, I just keep following behind you on the forums here!

i belive in evolutionsim

What do you mean "lose"? This isn't really a question of winning or losing. It's about figuring out how it worked. And about the creation stories, the messages they send are indeed important, but I'm not sure what you're saying when you say they aren't important. It's vital to support all of your reasoning in an argument or discussion.

Whoa... sorry about that last post, I was responding to something on the page before this.

ahhh? Oh

I'm definetely on the evolutionist side... there's just too much scientific fact. However, I don't know if this has been touched before (see post count) but could'nt god have started the whole thing at the beginning and then allowed evolution to occur? And technically that would include both.