Biblical Creationism is Incorrect

2C1: "No human ... was present at the foundations of existence, except ... God. ... I cannot assert ... [Biblical Creation] did, or did not happen ... Pro cannot argue that a natural process did, or did not give rise to the universe." 1. Personal experience is often biased and not the best source for information [01]. 2. If personal experience is the only way to prove something, then I ask you to disprove the fact (asserted by my personal experience) that I was there -- I watched the Big Bang, abiogenesis, and evolution, then popped back here. 3. Cross-apply my opponent's belief that only personal experience counts as evidence to the remainder of my opponent's case, and discount any evidence that my opponent didn't personally show to you, the voter. 4. My opponent has the dual burdens to prove that personal experience counts as evidence, and that only personal experience counts as evidence. I believe, however, that external evidence has empirically shown itself to be quite useful in science, and that epistemological skepticism, which is the ultimate result of this line of thinking, collapses into itself. --- 2C2: "Contention 1: ... Genesis was written ... 2,000-3,000 B.C., making it the oldest story of origins. ... On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 ... but has ... proven ... inaccurate. ... [T]his book gave rise to thousands of ... theories of origins, most of which ... are ... false. The Bible ... is the oldest ... it should be ... accepted ... because whoever wrote it was closer to the beginning than us." 1. Where on Wikipedia's page OR in the Biologos PDF does it say 2,000-3,000 BCE? 2. Wikipedia: "Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis ... but modern scholars increasingly see [the Pentateuch] as a product of the 6th and 5th centuries BC," [02]. 3. Biologos: "The Pentateuch ... is the ... product of a ... process ... that did not come to a close until the exile (586-539 BC) and postexilic period," [03]. 4. If the oldest religion is best, then we would follow the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, dated to 2353-2323 BCE [04]. Should we trust the Pyramid Texts as the most accurate religion? I think that you don't think so. 5. Please provide examples of problems with and false theories of origins that came directly from On the Origin of Species. 6. My opponent has the burden to prove older sources of knowledge are more accurate. However, I believe that the age of a source is irrelevant to its accuracy, because the quality of being correct is not inherently related to the quality of age. 7. Being chronologically "closer" to witnessing an event does not necessarily make your evidence more accurate. If you almost see a car crash, you still didn't see it, and your evidence is NOT more accurate.8. Cross-apply all problems with 2C1. --- 2C3A: "[F]resh biological material within ... fossils ... is being continually discovered, despite the protests of biochemists that it should not exist. ... [P]roteins, pigments, and DNA[,] ... cells and, ... tissues - have been found in fossils that are supposedly millions of years old. ... Fresh tissues and living cells cannot possibly be millions of years old, and ... constitute ... evidence for the young world that the Bible describes." 1. Unfortunately, the ICR page my opponent provided provides no references [05], so I can't check their accuracy, and I can't accept assertions without proof. 2. This is an ongoing source of study, and science doesn't fully understand why some samples would be so well-preserved. However, some new research show that the presence of iron in hemoglobin in blood may explain for some of the preservation present because of its preservative properties [06]; however, the study of iron's maximum preservative effects is not complete, and so we don't know how much of this preservation that iron may explain. Further, we don't know exactly how being buried and fossilized affects said tissue. Fundamentally, at this point, it's an argument from ignorance [07] to assert any real conclusions about this issue. 3. This is a problem for Biblical Creationism as well. Currently, the maximum extent of preservation by iron known to science is 2 years [06] -- not 4,750 -- which would invalidate the findings of tissue in pre-Flood fossils. Perhaps it would be better to believe in Last Thursdayism? --- 2C3B. "[M]utations build up over time, and at a certain point they will be activated and cause extensive damage to ... the species they inhabit, causing extinction. It is estimated that if 100 mutations are added every twenty years to the human species, they would become extinct after only 500 generations. [T]he earth must be young ... because if our race was millions of years old, we would have become extinct long ago." 1. Unfortunately, the ICR page my opponent provided provides no references [08], so I can't check their accuracy, and I can't accept assertions without proof. 2. The Avrila et. al. evidence that my opponent provides actually assists my case by pointing out that the effect of mutation on reproductive success is quite low: "[B]oth C1 (nonmutated) and C2 (grown from mutated specimens) populations were close to the mutation-selection-drift balance for viability ... traits, and are consistent with a 2.5-fold increase of the mutation rate in C2 and MA2. [Translation: Too much mutation DOES hurt reproductive ability, but pretty insignificantly for 2.5x more.] Despite this increase, the average panmictic (reproductive) viability in C2 was only slightly below that of C1, indicating that the expressed loads due to segregating (inheritable) deleterious (harmful) mutation were small, in agreement with the low deleterious mutation rate (0.015-0.045) previously reported for the MA1 lines," [09]. Basically, mutation happens, but only 0.015-0.045% of mutations in flies are harmful. Further, the abstract mentions that evolution acts as a counterbalance to harmful mutations, because those that are mutatd are less likely to survive, limiting the extent of the mutation's effects [09]. 3. The only evidence that my opponent provides for the harm of mutations is a New York Times article about how one mutation causes Alzheimers [10]. In contrast, look to the Avila et. al. evidence that my opponent provided, and to the fact that the vast majority (about 99%) of mutations aren't beneficial OR harmful [11][12], that mutations that ARE beneficial or harmful are usually minorly harmful or beneficial [11][12], and that a significant portion of functional mutations cause benefit, often large benefit [11][12]. 4. Further, where are you getting these numbers from? --- 2C3C: "Millions of ... examples exist where an animal today is the same as an animal fossilized, yet ... scientists dated the fossilized animal back millions of years. If one was to believe evolution, he would have to make a jump in logic. No animal could be the same millions of years ago as they are today, otherwise, evolution would be false." My opponent has a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution does not state that animals MUST evolve -- only that, if natural selection would make a genetic mutation more beneficial to an animal, that that mutation will become more prevalent in a species. For species like sharks and coelacanths, they are suited to their environment nearly perfectly, meaning that natural selection would not support any evolutionary change from their current species. For a better explanation, see my citation [13]. --- 2C4: "[W]e are ... aware that the universe is slowly expanding. ... [I]n the past the universe was smaller, until you reached a point where nothing could exist. ... [C]reation comes into play, because God is able to create things. Creationism is confirmed by this, because nothing cannot make something[.] ... God created the universe[.]" 1. First off, cross-apply my opponent's own 2C1 against 2C4. If we can't know about things except from personal experience, then how can we know what occurred in the past? 2. I, too, support the Big Bang theory. However, the Cosmological Argument (which this is [14]) doesn't hold much weight. 2.1: The Cosmological Argument makes the assumption that EVERYTHING must have a cause. While this is empirically observed, it is NOT a philosophical or logical truth. My opponent must uphold the assumption that, logically speaking, there are no uncaused causes. 2.2: Even making the aforementioned assumption, the Cosmological Argument merely pushes back creation one iteration. If EVERYTHING must have a creator, then God, too, must have a creator. Otherwise this argument is just special pleading [15]. 2.3: If God doesn't need a creator because he is eternal, then an eternal universe would also not need a creator. Seeing as it's hypothesized that the Big Bang created time [16], the universe could potentially be "eternal", and would similarly not need a cause. --- I await my opponent's rebuttal. --- References: [01] http://www.innocenceproject.org... [02] http://en.wikipedia.org... [03] http://biologos.org... [04] http://books.google.com... [05] http://www.icr.org... [06] http://www.natureworldnews.com... [07] http://en.wikipedia.org... [08] http://www.icr.org... [09] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [10] http://www.nytimes.com... [11] http://www.talkorigins.org... [12] http://www.talkorigins.org... [13] http://rationalwiki.org... [14] http://en.wikipedia.org... [15] http://en.wikipedia.org... [16] http://science.howstuffworks.com...