This house believes that evolution is more defensible than Young Earth Creationism

Defining Evolution In a lot of ways you're at least more honest than a lot of the evolutionists I have debated with. Because you're at least willing to admit that “evolution” encompasses a lot more than just biological life. Most evolutionists lately seem to want to limit evolution to just things that concern biological life and leaves the origins of the universe or life out of it. With that said, I don’t have real problem with your definitions for evolution except for two things: It can be shortened to “evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next” If this were truly all that you meant by evolution, then there would be no debate. All of us would be evolutionists by this definition. But unfortunately, this isn’t all that is meant as you admit earlier; "..it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions." Here you simply beg the question by assuming that the changes you're talking about are information gaining. We will discuss that below.Two Kinds of Science?There are two kinds of science, operational science, and historical science. Whether you like it or not, these distinctions do exist. Operational science deals with things in the present that we can see, test, and demonstrate. Historical science deals with things in the past so by definition, it is not something we can directly observe or test. All of our testing must be done in the present and from there, we can try to determine what happened in the past. But make no mistake about it, operational science is superior to historical science simply for the fact that it can be observed directly. If historical science were truly on the same level of credibility as operational science, then it would be rather easy to solve a court case, wouldn’t it? If you think about it, all court cases are about something that happened in the past and now the jury looks at the facts of the case (operational science) and based on that, they try to interpret what they think happened in the past (historical science). And unlike operational science, historical science is largely driven by the worldview (presupposed beliefs) of the researcher. E.g., if we see a world covered with fossils, then to the naturalist or atheist, this might be interpreted as evidence for long periods of time. But to the Biblical creationist, the fossils are evidence for the global flood. Who is right? Operational science can’t determine this alone, but it can be used to see which “theory” about the past makes the most sense of what we see in the present. More information here. [1] Genetic MutationYes, things change. Mutations are changes in the DNA strand as we all know. But is this 'change' really proof for evolution, in the molecules-to-man sense? No, because mutations always cause a loss of information, [2] the opposite needed for evolution. [3]If you really want to define evolution as "any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next", or "a change in gene frequency", then the fly example, the sickle cell example, the E. coli experiments, and "the endless list of genetic mutations that we observe in real life", 'proves evolution'. However, it 'proves creation' as well, since varying the amounts of already-existing genes is what creation is all about. [4] However, each mutation in the "endless list" gains no new information. [5] For evolution to be true, you need new information to be gained. However the downward motion we see in mutations is perfectly consistent with creation.Natural SelectionRemember operational science? Natural selection is a process that falls under that category, it's an observable fact. Creationists agree with evolutionists on a lot of the ideas associated with natural selection, except the idea that natural selection leads to molecules-to-man evolution. [6] If you provide evidence for that, I'll comment further.Speciation Speciation is observable and fits into the category of operational science. Speciation has never been observed to turn one kind of animal into another. [7] Again, if you provide evidence that mutations, natural selection, or speciation leads to transpeciation, then I'll comment further. So far, you've stated three facts of which we both agree on. You've made no case whatsoever.The Million Dollar Question Notice the subtle question-begging epithet you've used by contrasting evolution with creationism. The “-ism” at the end of “creation” implies that creation is simply a belief, but evolution isn’t. Also, you don't seem to understand why discrediting evolution actually is in favor for creation. Because either the universe is here by naturalistic means (God was not involved in any meaningful way) or the universe is not the result of naturalistic means. The law of the excluded middle exhausts any other possibility. So if we can show that it is impossible for the universe to have come into existence naturally, then it is powerful evidence that it was created supernaturally. Another example would be with chemical evolution, specifically abiogenesis. Either life originated via natural means or it is not the case that it originated via natural means. Again, the law of the excluded middle exhausts all other possibilities. So, if atheistic abiogenesis can be disproven, then it follows that life did not originate naturally. This question I think is incredibly valuable, as there is no experiment that comes to mind to prove or disprove the hypothesis, which makes it both unfalsifiable and unverifiable. However, this isn’t to say that there aren’t experiments that we can do to show how the evidence is more consistent with biblical creation. E.g., because biblical creationists believe that God created original kinds of animals and everything is a winding down process, then we would expect to see that mutations generally lead to losses of genetic information. [8] This is certainly what we observe and is consistent with the creationist’s model. Also, since creationists believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, we would expect that diamonds buried in rock layers that secular scientists claim are millions of years old, would still contain C14 in them. [9] And this is what we do find, and again, this is consistent with the creationist’s model and inconsistent with the evolutionist’s model since all of the C14 should be gone by the secular time-scale. Is Creation Objective?"Helen Longino dealt with the question “what makes science objective”?" This is the fallacy of reification because science is a tool used by people, and it’s people who may or may not be objective. Someone can certainly use science properly or improperly, however. "She states two characteristics: (1) cultural diversity among the scientific community" How exactly does cultural diversity lead to objectiveness? It makes it sound like this person thinks there is no cultural diversity among biblical creationists. "and (2) that scientific theory ultimately must bend to truth. The Young Earth hypothesis, unlike evolution, fulfils neither characteristic. It is not objective.”" I find it ironic that you would agree that a scientific theory must “bend to truth”. Because not one evolutionist who accepts abiogenesis bases this off of the observable facts, but instead bases this belief off of his worldview. Talk about not bending to the facts! What you will find is that all evidence is interpreted according to the worldview of the observer. That is all “theories” bend towards the worldview. The reason the evolutionists believe in abiogenesis is because their worldview doesn’t allow for another possibility. _______________________________________________________________________Sources: http://tinyurl.com...