Do creationists have even one single honest argument?

Question

I've never heard a single one. With the possible exception of Michael Behe's stuff, which as far as I can tell is merely incorrect, not actually dishonest. But if there is one single honest argument in favour of creationism, I'd very much like to hear it.

Here's a tip, though - if you even think of citing Kent Hovind or Ken Ham or Ray Comfort, you've already failed, so don't bother.

Legolas - FAIL

wickedawesomem - Because the earth rotates at a constant speed, ya muppet.

pinkstealth - fossil record, genetics, the fact that bacteria and viruses mutate according to Darwinian principles...the list goes on. Read a book or something.

Phil - Yes, I know drdino.com, and I literally don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Mark - yeah, that kinda works. That one I have no real problem with.

Paul H - Based on the available evidence, I reject it.

Answer 1

the most honest argument is theres obviously a pattern to everything and it would at least appear designed .. to say everything just happened is akin to saying my new car formed itself in the garage ..

Answer 2

I'm a creationist and I believe in an ancient earth, The Bible proves it out as well. Nowhere in the Bible does it say God created the earth on the first day, instead it say he created it in the Begining. If you look at vs 2 of gen.1 the word "was" can more acurately be translated as became. Meaning something casused the earth to Become without form and void. so between the original creation and its becoming in a chaotic state, what happened we don't know for sure, other than there were dinosaurs, manlike creatures, etc. roaming the earth. Humanity can only be traced to around 7000 years give or take. However we find human like skele's that are 10's of thousands of years old, sounds like something was here before adam! man LIKE creatures but not man, in that we are made in god's image being soul spirit and body, a triune being. Theres lots more evidence in the Bible, much more than I wanna type here, so mail me if ya wanna know more of what I believe...

Hey Phil I just read your edit, In order to even begin to understand the existence of God one must "Think outside the clocks" so to speak. God is in the realm of eternity, it's NOT a measurement of time, actually it is the absense of time. It has no begining nor end. Therefore God being an eternal being, has no begining nor end. Time however is a created thing. Our physical lives exsist within the bounds of time. I believe it was the first thing created of God, it had a begining and it has an end. That is how God can say he is th alpha and omega, the first and the last, the begining and the end. being a created substance that has measure, this would potentially allow for time travel but i'm not gonna get into that.

If you can let go of factual proof in evidence, and see that there are some things our finite brains are unable to fully comprehend and understand you would start to see the begining of faith. And with faith all things are possible.

Answer 3

All of creation requires a creator just like a painting needs a painter...a blank canvas and some paint colors does not turn into a masterpiece painting all by itself. Life cannot begin by itself from non-living materials. We do not know what existed before the creation of the universe and time... it's a one time event beyond our ability to see past it to establish any difference in the makeup of what was before or after it. All we have is the evidence of it and how we interpret that evidence based on our belief systems. We all have the same evidence..same rocks, same laws of nature, same fossils,etc... Man's reason and logic have been wrong in the past and scientific study is no guarantee of absolute truth regarding the origins of the universe or life. We don't know what dark matter or dark energy is yet they make up 95 percent of the universe. Historical science like evolution is merely speculation on how life may have evolved based on scientific study and indirect observation but no one has ever documented it actually happening over millions of years through direct observation so it is no more valid than creation by an unobservable creation event. Both must be taken on faith and personal beliefs. We do have a firsthand account of creation as it was inspired by God to be written in the Bible's Genesis account...it is up to us to accept or reject it.

Answer 4

"Honest" in your opinion, of course.

Have you ever heard the cosmological argument? The argument is simply this: The cosmos is here and must be explained as to how it got here. This argument is using the law of cause and effect, which states: Every effect must have a preceding and adequate cause. What does it mean by adequate? Well, the building didn’t collapse because a mosquito landed on it. The tsunami didn’t hit because someone threw a pebble into the ocean.

Now, when it comes to explaining the existence of the universe, you only get three possibilities: (1) the universe is eternal (it has always been here), (2) the universe created itself, or (3) something created the universe. There is no other possibility except to claim that the universe is simply an illusion and does not exist—but I don’t think you would buy that. So let’s examine these three possibilities to see which is the most reasonable.

First, is the universe eternal? Absolutely not. We know this is true because of the universally recognized second law of Thermodynamics (the law of energy decay or entropy). This law states that everything goes downhill from order to disorder, more usable energy to less. This law is the reason why heat flows from hot to cold and why this building will fall apart if it is not kept up with. If someone doesn’t believe in the second law of thermodynamics, just challenge them to live forever; even with this awesome machinery we have in our bodies, you will eventually wear out and die.

We can see that the universe is running down and wearing out; the stars are burning up, the radioactive atoms are decaying, etc. As Psalm 102:26 says, the heavens “will wear out like a garment.” Given enough time, the universe will experience what some call a “heat death” where there is maximum entropy; every part of the universe will be the same temperature, and no further work will be possible (speaking of energy transfer); all energy will be evenly distributed.

Eternal things obviously do not wear out because they would have had an infinite amount of time to come to their end. Since you cannot have an end without a beginning, the universe must have had a beginning. Evolutionary astronomer Dr. Robert Jastrow said, “Now three lines of evidence—the motions of the galaxies, the laws of thermodynamics, the life story of the stars—pointed to one conclusion; all indicated that the Universe had a beginning.” And everything that has a beginning has a cause. This building had a beginning, you had a beginning, therefore there must have been a preceding and adequate cause.

The evolutionists know this and so they came up with the “big bang” theory from that “cosmic egg” (the universe exploded into existence). But there is still a major problem—you have to explain where that “cosmic egg” came from. As it has been said, “There must be a cosmic chicken.”

Some scientists like Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov proposed the oscillating universe theory to avoid a beginning. This theory states that the universe acts like a yo-yo; it explodes and then gravity pulls it back in, and then the process repeats itself over and over. But the second law of Thermodynamics still refutes that idea, since each cycle would exhaust more and more usable energy. The universe is not eternal!

Ok, that brings us to the second possibility: Did the universe create itself? I think Hebrews 3:4 answers that pretty well, “...every house is built by someone...”

Let’s say I walk into my livingroom and see a crayon drawing of our family on the wall. When I ask my daughter where it came from, will I accept her answer of, “It just appeared there; it came from nothing”? Her grandparents might, but I won’t.

It is pretty clear that something cannot bring itself into existence. As R.C. Sproul has said, “It is impossible for something to create itself. The concept of self-creation is a contradiction in terms, a nonsense statement . . . It would have to have the causal power of being before it was. It would have to have the power of being before it had any being with which to exercise that power.” As it has been said, “Nothing scratched its head one day and decided to become something.” I’m sorry to have to drop this bombshell on you, but from nothing, comes nothing.

Besides, the First Law of Thermodynamics (the law of energy conservation) argues against it. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system (without a God, this Universe would have to be a closed system) the amount of energy present in that system is constant (it cannot be created or destroyed), it can only be converted from one form to another. So, if the Universe initially contained no energy, and then it spontaneously generated all of the energy in the Universe now, the First Law would be violated. Without intervention from an outside force, the amount of energy in the Universe would have remained constant and unchanged at zero.

And now the third possibility: Did something create the universe? If the universe is not eternal and could not have created itself, then the only remaining alternative is that the universe was created by something or Someone. This would have to be a transcendent, eternal, self-existing being. I can find only one satisfactory explanation to our conundrum, and that is found in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Someone may argue, “If the universe needs a cause, then why doesn’t God need a cause; who created God?” The answer is, everything that has a beginning has a cause; God, unlike the universe, did not have a beginning. Time is linked to matter and space (as we can see from Einstein’s general relativity). If God created the universe, then He created time along with matter and space. If God created time, then He is outside of time and doesn’t need a beginning.

What is more absurd, to believe that God Created everything out of nothing or that nothing turned itself into everything? The fact is, we live in a Universe that is an effect. There must be a preceding and adequate cause for it. The only thing that makes sense is a Creator who is more powerful than anything we can imagine.

Answer 5

It is impossible for any creationist to put forward an academically-honest argument, because they START with a conclusion. They set up organizations to come up with vague, innocuous-sounding ideas so long as these ideas hint strongly at the biblical account of creation. Science does not proceed this way.

wickedawesomem wrote:
"how all the days are the same length"
It would be much more amazing if the days were NOT all the same length. Spin a basketball. Does it spontaneously slow down, speed up, reverse directions...? It's just rotational inertia.

JpCreation101 wrote:
"fake science theories like the big bang theory"
How do you care to explain the cosmological principle and the microwave background radiation, both of which were predicted BEFORE they were discovered?

Answer 6

I think that such arguments as Dawn's show what is typical about Creationism.

She's likely honest, but simply misinformed. Too many people don't understand such things as how proteins can function. They hear the seemingly logical arguments that presume that science teaches that a cell formed all at once, by accident. They then compare this to a tornado in a junkyard building a car.

They don't understand that chemical processes and biological matter have a vastly different nature from mechanical objects. Chemicals, and especially organic chemicals can have an ability to form more complex molecules, with energy, on their own. Mechanical objects will need to be designed and formed to fit. Chemicals can fit by their own nature, in certain combinations.

I'm tired. I'm sleepy. I'm going to bed. I hope I made my point.

Answer 7

i think i does not say my argument that follows is the final argument, regardless of if that's the final i've got ever got here across (as properly the obtrusive "The Bible suggested it got here approximately in a 6 day introduction."). as a substitute, this argument tries to apply a chain of logical if-then statements. whilst this argument does not probably be sensible against atheists, it somewhat is sensible against previous earth-introduction (The question is to no longer argue against atheism besides). If evolution (as defined below) introduced approximately the life-types we've right this moment, then there would desire to have been dying till now Adam and Eve. If there replaced into dying till now Adam and Eve, then their sin (nor any of humanities' sins) would have led to dying, because it existed in simple terms before sin. If dying isn't led to with the aid of sin, then Jesus Christ's sacrifice can't eliminate dying. If Christ did no longer come to eliminate dying, then Christianity falls aside, by using fact there could be no eternal life. Evolution-the changing of life-types over the years. Macroevolution (as used above)-the changing of life-types over tens of millions of years. in this version, all life in the international descends from a single ancestor. it rather is the theory supported with the aid of textbooks. Microevolution-the changing of life-types over a short quantity of time. in this version, the modifications of life-types does not carry any species into belonging to a species of a distinctive form, yet basically distinctive modifications of the comparable form. it rather is the evidence utilized in textbooks, which does no longer rapidly help macroevolution. i'm a Christian youthful earth Creationist-6,000 years (provide or take some hundred).

Answer 8

I think the arguments from irreducible complexity are honest arguments. I don't have any reason to suspect dishonesty on the part of those who make the argument.

But what do the motivations of the arguers have to do with anything? The arguments are either sound or they are not, and we can't determine that by speculating about the motives of the arguers. We have to judge the arguments on their own merits.

Scott Pruett who does the Pensees blog has written quite a bit on intelligent design, and I think his arguments are honest. I'm providing a link to his blog.

Answer 9

Ever read Summa Theologica, or the theory of first cause? Most scientists would agree that for something to be in motion, something must have set it in motion. A pendulum is at rest unless set in motion. So what was the first cause? What was the first hand to set this reality in motion. It's not a cop out!!! There was obviously something/someone outside of our 3 dimensional reality that caused this to happen, but the point is there must have been something/someone.

Answer 10

Not likely. Ever looked at drdino.com? Absolutely hilarious some of the stuff they try to pass off as Science.

Wow Mark- A well learned INTELLIGENT and open minded Christian. Why isnt the World populated with your sort.

Answer 11

They are all dishonest, you cannot just assume that something is a fact because it seems like it is a fact.