Creationism's Claims Are Valid

Thanks for that response Pro. Pro says: 1. "The universe and life came about through divine acts." My response: If the universe and life came about through divine acts, why are these divine acts contingent on natural processes? Why does something divine need natural processes to accomplish the universe? Furthermore, I'm not a definition stickler, but this debate is about Pro defending divine acts RATHER THAN NATURAL PROCESSES for the explanation of the universe and life. Pro continues: 2. "The evidence [for Creationism] is available for everyone." My response: If the evidence for Creationism is available for everyone, why isn't the evidence for Creationism available for everyone in this debate? So far, Pro has only mentioned certain natural processes, and baldly asserted that they are guided by divine intervention without any evidence that isolates such an intervention. How does Pro know that these natural processes are divinely intervened? Pro defends: 3. "My outlined process [for Creationism]...was summing up our basic understanding of cosmology, physics, geology, biology, etc..." My response: If these naturally-explained understandings are divine, which we agree is antithetical to this debate's definition of Creationism, then Pro needs to explain HOW these natural processes are indicative of the divine. Yeah, we know that there are series of causes and effects within our natural explanations (science)...why should we consider ANY of these causes to be divine? How is that valid to do? Again...divinity in this debate is in contrast to natural processes not contingent on them. Pro continues: 4. "It is inferred that the origin [of the universe] is caused by the divine...[which] is manifest through the big bang, and through the subsequent expansion of the universe." My response: So the natural explanations for the origins of our universe are in fact indicators of specific divine acts? Pro needs to mechanistically explain how these divine acts act on the natural processes NOT how the natural processes work. Simply explaining a natural process and labeling it divine is not enough...we need more evidence for divinity. I cannot stress enough that Creationism's claims, as defined in this debate, exist in opposition to natural processes. Pro is claiming that his version of creationism REQUIRES natural processes instead of the agreed on version of Creationism that has specific divine acts RATHER than natural processes. Pro asserts: 5. "A cause to the universe and a cause to life...[are] easy targets for creationists to attack as neither has an explanation that is sufficient to science, or is at least theorized. " False. Quantum fluctuations are a fact. Not a hypothesis like Pro claimed. This fact has also been CONFIRMED by the thermal variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Quantum fluctuations are in fact what Pro claims isn't sufficient. Really? Check it out for yourself at NASA. They have a map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (the proof of the big bang) with the thermal variations from the initial state of the big bang; those thermal variations are directly proportional to those in quantum fluctuations. Check the maps yourself. NASA has an awesome probe (WMAP) that detects variations in radiation that is very accurate and yields wonderful radiation maps of the universe. http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov... Quantum fluctuations led to the expression of positive and negative energy, our universe, and the subsequent inflation of our universe. Quantum fluctuations are as real as microorganisms. As for the origins of life, Abiogenesis is a fact. Abiogenesis is the fact that life can come from inorganic compounds. In chemistry, a compound is organic if it is covalently bonded to carbon. If the compound is not covalently bonded to carbon it is inorganic. So the distinction between inorganic and organic in chemistry can be very small if you're dealing with carbon compounds. The Miller Urey and replicated experiments showed that with naturally occurring atmospheric gases, inorganic compounds, like those of earlier earth, can become organic compounds. http://www.scientificamerican.com... So let's see how extreme inorganic-->organic is. Here's an inorganic carbon compound, cyanate H N C O Here's an organic compound, an amino acid/building block of life, Glycine C 2 H 5 N O 2 Is it that much of a leap to say that natural atmospheric pressures likely in earth's history could help spawn a shift from HNCO-->C2H5NO2? Ok well then the idea of inorganic-->organic shouldn't seem that radical. A claim from people who have not looked at the replicated studies of the Miller Urey is that too much oxygen, which would be present in earth's atmosphere, ruins the results of inorganic-->organic. This is true, but any lowering at all of the oxygen from the typical atmosphere allows for the inorganic-->organic switch proven in the experiments. These oxygen fluctuations are demonstrable. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org... Once we have amino acids, many opponents to the theory say, well amino acids are just lifeless organic matter...how do you get to replication genetically? Ready? Amino acids react with each other, and if a chain of amino acids, polypeptides, fold onto themselves, they become biologically active. To quote the NIH: "The sequence of the amino acid chain causes the polypeptide to fold into a shape that is biologically active." http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov... Once we have biologically active proteins, we are talking about basic genetics. RNA - a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins. To me, this is valid, because all claims are mechanistically explained; proposing a divine act behind abiogenesis is invalid, because the mechanism of abiogenesis does not require divinity. Pro complains: 6. "Con claims that I need to show divinity. But why should that be? My response: Because by not showing divinity, you don't show divine acts; you just show acts. It's kind of like just showing natural processes and not showing divinely-intervened natural processes (counter to the definitions). Pro provokes: 7. "Can Con show "nothing"? Can Con show how our life originated? Yes, and yes. Quantum fluctuations at [+0, -0] total energy have no matter/energy/gravity/radiation/light/atoms/particles/time/space/laws. Seems like nothing to me. I'll show nothing again [+0,-0]. This has been confirmed to be what expressed positive and negative energy [+1,-1], or as Pro calls it "what began our universe." So I have shown nothing [+0,-0], and that this nothing is responsible for the expression of our universe [+1,-1]. Abiogenesis proves that inorganic-->organic. This shows how our life originated...so have the oxford journals. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org... Summing it up: *Pro has not met the burden of proof to demonstrate the validity of specific divine acts as the explanations for the origins of our universe and life, and instead has gone counter to the agreed definitions and created a version of creationism that is CONTINGENT ON instead of RATHER THAN natural processes. *Pro has not provided any evidence for divine acts that led to the universe/life. Check the debate yourself. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Dismissed. *Pro claims that divine acts are manifest through the big bang. So, to prove divine acts, one just needs to find any naturally explained process and say it's been divinely intervened. Why does a divine act require natural processes, even though this idea is counter to the debate? *Pro said that science does not have anything sufficient for the origins of the universe and life. Quantum fluctuations (the universe) and abiogenesis (life) are not only sufficient to science, they are demonstrable facts that literally any literate person with internet access can see. The links for these FACTS--not guesses/hypothesis/unfounded inferences--of science are throughout my cited sources. Seriously, check them out with honesty. --side note-- Even if science couldn't explain the origins of the universe/life, that doesn't mean, as Pro states, " we can, with equal support, propose the divine." This is an argument from ignorance fallacy specifically called the god of the gaps. https://en.wikipedia.org... The violator of this fallacy appeals to our ignorance (science doesn't know) so that they may fill in this gap in our knowledge with, in this case, the divine. This is fallacious and is similar to what ancient people did with lightning bolts, because there were no scientific explanations of charged particles in clouds, so people inferred divinity; they filled the gap in knowledge with god. I also argue saying "before the big bang" is nonsensical, because time requires matter and the space between matter, and "before" is a temporal concept contingent on time; time does not exist at [+0,-0] total energy. But to play into Pro's characterization of the universe, QUANTUM FLUCTUATIONS are before the big bang and negate your claim that we don't know. To conclude, I will leave a quote from Pro: "Creationism does not need a sound basis in fact to be valid" Then Pro, you are in the wrong debate. From the definitions for THIS debate: "valid - having a sound basis in logic or fact."