[burnished]

Oh they really aren't. Its sort of a tired rhetorical ploy pitting them as faith based beliefs on equal intellectual footing though.

Both are theories about the world. 'Creationism' as a theory really only became pure faith very recently as most specific claims attributable to it have been disproven or better explanations have been found. For a long time it was a perfectly cogent theory.

[basil-rash]

This is objectively false. Evolution explains absolutely nothing creationism doesn’t, and creationism explains a whole lot that evolution cannot. For instance, universal origins and the formation of cells.

[carapace]

Creationism doesn't explain anything.

You don't have to take evolution on faith. You can write a computer program that demonstrates that selection among almost-but-not-quite identical entities with heritable properties generates adaptive forms. Many people have.

DNA is real. Reproducing lifeforms are real. We know how they work in some detail. There's no faith required.

[arkey]

> Creationism doesn't explain anything.

How so? For that to happen you'd need to have the usual "evolution-is-science-and-creationism-is-religion-which-denies-science" stance, no?

There are creationist scientists, there is "creationism-proving", or at the very least allow "creationism-compatible" evidence in science, and so on. Let's reduce it even more, science hasn't been able to disprove Creation.

Believing "God did it" should not invalidate science, wanting to understand more, and actually making experiments. On the contrary, it should encourage it, as it did with many scientists who, in a way, brought us to where we are.

And as other commenters say, your computer program would prove absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things, primarily because micro-evolution (which can easily be understood as a feature of Creation) does certainly not imply macro-evolution or abiogenesis.

[basil-rash]

Please understand the discussion at hand before commenting. Nobody is denying the existence of small-scale "micro-evolution" that subtly guides species into local optima. The question is of abiogenesis and mass-speciation, topics evolutionism has been thoroughly unable to explain, despite many attempts.

[carapace]

I do understand the discussion. You don't seem to understand what explanation is. Saying "God did it" doesn't explain the origin of life. We may never have a scientific explanation for how life arose. It may be that it was an act of God (which, for what it's worth, I personally believe) but that doesn't explain it. There are limits to human knowledge, and faith transcends those limits. You seem to confuse faith and science and put them in some sort of competition with each other, they're not, they are both approaches to the Truth.

[basil-rash]

You are using the evolutionist's definition of "explain", which is not applicable to the creationist's interpretation of reality. Under the evolutionists view, there is no actor with the ability to alter universal state besides those physical laws which we currently observe. Thus, any change in universal state that has ever occurred would naturally be able to be "explained" by providing a detailed step-by-step rundown of how those laws interacted with universal state S until it reached universal state S'. Under creationism, this definition is nonsense: any change in state can occur at any time based on the whims of the unknown actor, no further rationale is necessary or indeed possible.

Accordingly, if we take a definition of "explain" which does not assume a particular interpretation of the fundamental axiom (as we should, when that axiom is the very thing under debate), my statement is perfectly valid: That actor which we cannot fathom made it so. Thus, it is.

[dekhn]

Could you show us an experiment that would demonstrate creationism is a better explanation than evolution (and random chance) for the formation of cells? If you can't come up with an actual experiment, there's really no way to say that creationism "explains" something.

[basil-rash]

Creationism explains everything very simply: "X is the way it is because God ordained it to be". There is no need to experimentally verify, its existence is the proof. In general, the need for experimental evidence is only present when you've accepted the lack of external intervention as axiomatic. When that very axiom is under debate, experimentalism is entirely irrelevant.

Not to mention, anything I present as being evidence of intelligence being more able to produce functional complexity than randomness you would reinterpret as "randomness-that-produced-something-that-look-like-intelligence producing functional complexity better than randomness-that-doesnt-look-like-intelligence".

[samatman]

Do you believe that the Bible is the literal and inspired word of God, correct in every detail?

[basil-rash]

It's certainly inspired, but it has been subject to the chaotic nature of humanity, as has everything since the fall.

[samatman]

Close enough.

You're trying to package your religion as something which it isn't. Creationism is Christian theology, not science. People know this. On some level, you know this.

[basil-rash]

Of course I know that. And further I know evolutionism is the same. Indeed I opened this entire thread with the statement: "both are faith based responses to questions we cannot answer any other way."

It would seem you are not paying attention to what is actually being said.

[samatman]

> And further I know evolutionism is the same.

You're dead wrong about this.