Creationists and Evolutionists?

Question

Hey I have some questions about the miller - uredy experiment, creationists and evolutionists.
What assumptions do many evolutionists bring to their understanding of evolution? How do these assumptions affect the conclusions drawn from the claims as evidence?

What do creationists say are the difficulties with this evidence, which lead them to dispute the theory of evolution

What assumptions do creationists bring to their understanding of evolution? How do these assumptions affect the conclusions drawn from the claims as evidence?

Answer 1

First, the Miller-Urey experiment has almost NOTHING to do with evolution. It is about the origins of life, which is a very different question.

So by 'evolutionist' I can only assume you mean 'scientist'.

The assumptions brought by the scientists are that there are three ingredients that may have brought about the origins of replicating life:
1. Certain inorganic compounds available in the early earth;
2. Certain sources of energy;
3. At least 800 million to 1 billion years of TIME.

The point of the Miller-Urey experiment was to show that organic compounds could arise from inorganic compounds given certain simple conditions.

They found that by combining water, hydrogen, methane, and ammonia, with the right kind of sparking energy source (simulating lighting), after about a week, amino acids were forming, including 13 of the 22 amino acids found in the proteins used in life. (Let me repeat ... one week in a flask ... this is a small microcosm of what might happen in a billion years in an ocean.)

Answer 2

The Miller-Urey experiments were intended to prove how life could evolve from non-life (abiogenesis).
In fact they show the opposite - the sheer impossibility of such a thing.

The link below is a fairly technical article putting the Creationist case.
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4111

You are right to consider people's assumptions.
Most evolutionists make the asumption of materialism - what we see is all there is. They typically assume that God does not exist (or has no meaningful role), ruling out a priori the possibility of creation. (This is not a scientific approach.)

Uniformitarianism is a common assumption - that the processes we see acting today are the ones which have always acted. Creationists believe in teh catastrohic global flood, which leads to a very different interpretation of the evidence that we all have in common.

Some interesting articles here on assumptions
http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/creationontheweb?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=assumptions

Answer 3

Those who study evolution bring the assumption that physical laws that apply now have always applied throughout time.

This principle, called uniformitarianism, affects the interpretation of everything in physics, geology, astronomy, and any other historical science. All of the evidence gathered from all of these fields indicates that uniformitarianism is consistent with the physical evidence presented by the universe around us. (Except possibly some weird stuff in the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang).

Assuming that the physical laws of the present are the key to understanding how things occurred in the past affects how scientists interpret their results because they assume that things then work the same way they do today.

Creationists start with the assumption that God created everything according to the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, and reject anything which does not fit with this assumption (which is a lot).

Creationist assumptions do not affect their conclusions at all, as they have already come to their conclusion, and only accept evidence which they interpret as supporting their conclusion, while rejecting anything else.

Answer 4

In regard to the Miller-Urey experiment, no assumptions that were made would discount the experimental data. That is what science does; attempts to hold such assumption to the minimum by the preponderance of evidence. I do not know, or care what creationists say about this experiment, because I prefer to come to my own conclusions with the evidence before me. They have only provided easily refuted assertions; not evidence. Creationists do not bring assumptions, but a position of absolutism that has a concept in place that they try to fit pseudo-evidence to. Scientists try to seek their answers in nature.

PS Chas_Chas_123. Went to your site and perused the article. Now I have a clearer understanding of the problem. You said the article was and I quote, " fairly technical ". If to a creationist an article that I found to be at a seventh grade level ( as gathered from questions submitted to this site ) is deemed, " fairly technical ", then the gap between science and creationism is glaringly obvious!

Answer 5

Creationists assume that evolution is wrong (if I understand what you mean by creationist - I'm thinking bilbical literalism). You cannot be a strict creationist and not assume that evolution is wrong.

Evolutionists assume that God is not playing a big trick that makes evolution look extremely plausible.

The problem that creationists have with evidence for evolution is that it is......um.....well...evidence for evolution. And that it's not in the Bible.

Answer 6

Never assume! Assumptions are bad for Science. In fact, if you find yourself assuming anything, try to disprove it as soon as possible. That's called The Scientific Method.