Seeking to Define the Essence of the Difference
Between "Evolution" and "Creation"
Most of this document was drafted on or before 14 May 2004.
I resumed work on 27 September 2007 starting with section 20 on page 78 and this version is released on 4 October 2007 with minor modifications to the first part of the book while accepting that my understanding of some issues has evolved in the intervening three and a half years.
ABOUT INTERPRETING THIS DOCUMENT
This document started out with a vague idea of where i was headed in terms of solid evidence in support of the thesis that there is a creator.
As i wrote and researched i gained more insight into what i thought was important.
I have chosen not to edit the overall structure and flow of the document much in order to attempt to preserve the line of thought i followed.
I started writing out with quite a high level of uncertainty about the conclusion and, as things progressed, developed a higher level of certainty.
I have chosen to leave this development in the document in the hope that it will be of assistance to others in tracing my steps in this particular voyage of discovery.
For this reason the document does not always flow and there is some repetition of points as i revisited some issues and reached greater clarity.
I hope that this approach will work for you and that you will gain some value from it no matter what you conclude.
In my research i found many cases where the argument seemed to revolve around the choice of words of a particular person or about the opinions of a particular person rather than focusing on what seemed to me to be fundamental principles.
In reading what follows, i ask you not to focus on my particular choice of words or what "i" say. Rather focus on the concepts and principles that YOU can verify from your OWN personal experience and see where that takes you.
SUMMARY
This ebook sets out to evaluate whether there is solid physical evidence of the existence of a creator and that our world and human kind were created and did not evolve.
A wide diversity of examples are used to evidence something that is referred to as engineered evolutionary creation and to argue against random non-engineered evolution.
It is concluded that for those who are willing to rationally examine all the evidence there is a robust case for the existence of a creator while if someone does not want to believe they will probably find excuses not to accept the evidence that is presented.
It is concluded that in both cases it is a matter of faith -- either one believes in a creator and cannot explain where He came from or one believes in the existence of matter from an origin that we cannot explain.
The critical reason to accept the existence of a creator is that He is reported to have said that those who do believe will be rewarded and may qualify to sit on a high throne in heaven for eternity while those who do not believe will burn in a lake of fire and brimstone for eternity. However, i cannot offer solid evidence of these choices.
The bottom line as i see it is for you to assess that there is a reasonable basis to believe that a Creator exists and then to pray to Him to reveal Himself to you.
Faith is a personal thing that is more about personal experience of the creator than it is about intellectual assent to the probability of His existence, although intellectual assent may be an essential step in the road to true faith.
In writing this eBook i have done my best to be impartial, to the extent that i have failed in this endeavour, please accept my sincere apologies.
To the extent that various items of content may be offensive to various people i apologise, it was not my intention to offend you.
I hope that you will find this book interesting and challenging.
James Robertson
04 October 2007
email: james@etimin.org
1. INTRODUCTION
I have recently (May 2004) become intensely aware of the debate between those who allege that the universe and mankind "evolved" and those who allege that it was "created" by a supernatural creator.
By training, i am an engineer with a doctorate in Civil Engineering. Accordingly, i have a rigorous formal training in physics, chemistry, mathematics, thermodynamics and mechanics amongst other disciplines.
Up to the age of thirty nine, i was convinced of the validity of the theory commonly referred to as "evolution" and was sceptical, cynical and judgmental about people who believed in creation and a creator. I had some level of intellectual knowledge of "Christianity" and a lot of judgments about "The Bible", the "Church", etc.
In 1993, i had a significant experience which convinced me that there was a creator and that he wanted a personal relationship with me. I made certain choices about believing "The Bible" and about seeking a personal relationship with this creator. Since then, i have had many experiences that have reinforced my conviction that this creator, whose essential name i understand to be "Yah", who describes himself as "Yah the eternally self existing", does exist and does want a personal relationship with every person on this planet. In what follows, i will refer to this being as "the Almighty".
I appreciate that this may constitute an obstacle to some who read this article. However, i ask you to grant me the space to use certain terminology that i am familiar with. I will attempt in the remainder of this article to minimise the use of this term and other terms which might be seen as seeking to impose my perspective on what i hope will be a reasonably objective analysis of what seems important from my perspective.
I have also come to believe profoundly that mankind today knows very little about this being who i believe created us and that much of what mankind claims to know about this being and his ways and why he does things is seriously in error. So much so, that a few days ago i was forced to conclude that i was not certain that i could offer a solid, objective, unemotional case to substantiate what i believe.
I also concluded that there was much that was said in support of "evolution" that i could not summarily reject or offer convincing evidence to disprove.
Much of this realisation came about as a consequence of an email dialogue with two proponents of evolution. During this dialogue, particularly with the second person, the channel director of an internationally broadcast specialist television channel on history, i came to see that my attitude had become arrogant, judgemental and positional.
I was writing in a way that suggested that i HAD "all truth" and that those who did not believe what i believed were not walking in integrity or were fools.
This is not consistent with the values and disciplines associated with what i claim to believe, specifically that i should not judge others.
This brought me to the challenging realisation that, having departed from a harsh and judgemental position in support of evolution, i had migrated to a harsh and judgemental position in support of creation.
After much soul searching, i concluded that this was not what i wanted for myself.
I concluded that, while i have profound conviction of the essence of what i believe, there was much that i could not adequately explain in a manner that satisfied my engineering training and that, accordingly, i was not equipped to offer any other person an adequate basis to rationally consider whether they could accept and adopt what i believe.
In evaluating my position, i spent several hours on the internet. I started by looking for some "evidence" that i was convinced existed and would incontrovertibly support my position. I found rapidly that others had very different views of my "evidence".
In particular, i spent several hours on the http://www.talkorigins.org - "The Talk Origins Archive" a web site "Exploring the Creation / Evolution Controversy".
This site contains literally hundreds of pages seeking to address many of the pieces of "evidence" that i had held in my earlier discussions to be solid.
This was a challenging experience in that it offered me the opportunity to assess what people who support evolution are saying about the arguments and evidence offered by those who support creation.
I found myself confronted with many statements in support of creation that i could not agree with and also confronted with many statements in support of evolution that i could not agree with. I also found many statements on both sides that i understood to be valid.
These findings presented me with many dilemma's that challenged me considerably. In particular, i found myself challenged to see whether i could objectively, in a manner that was respectful and honouring of my engineering disciplines, present an analysis of the subject that would stand the test of scrutiny. And, if i could not, whether i could objectively own what it was that i could not substantiate in a manner that left space for others to draw their own conclusions.
This document is an attempt to meet this objective.
It is my hope that no matter what your perspective that this article will challenge you to take a fresh look at your perspective on the subject of evolution versus creation.
2. AN IMPORTANT ASSUMPTION AND SOME PAINFUL DEDUCTIONS
In all that follows, i would like to suggest that ultimately there is only one accurate explanation for any piece of evidence or data and that is what actually happened.
Thus, at the simplest level, the universe exists, it came from somewhere.
As far as i can see, whatever evolutionists and creationists want to believe it only happened one way.
It seems clear to me that any answer must take account of all available data and evidence.
One of the problems that i notice is that it seems that most people ATTACH their interpretation to the evidence as though the interpretation is part of the evidence.
Something that seems very clear to me is that there is no human being alive today who was present before the first human being capable of speaking came into existence. Whether they were created or evolved or came to be as the conclusion of an evolutionary process of creation or whether they came into existence in some other way.
There is also no written record, written at the time, which provides a human eye witness account. There is not even a written record which claims to provide an eye witness account. Specifically, "the Bible" does not claim to provide an eye witness account by a human being of how the first human being came to exist.
Accordingly, there is no human eye witness account of HOW the first man came to exist that is offered by either side in the controversy.
There is an enormous amount of evidence that man does exist, that the universe exists, that animals and plants exist.
However, there is a great deal of dispute about how they got there.
There are allegedly physical remains, rock masses, deposits of material and remains that provide tangible evidence of the prior existence of living creatures that DID exist at some time, as evidenced by their skeletons, etc. This includes alleged evidence of creatures that have the appearance of being "intermediate" between apes and humans. It also includes alleged evidence of giants, artefacts supporting "Bible" stories, etc.
It seems to me that, provided these remains are physically verifiably in existence, it is not helpful to offer explanations that sound like they are ignoring the existence of these specimens.
Here i find what seems to me to be a very substantial dilemma.
I CAN verify that i exist, at least at the level that i can see myself, touch myself, hear myself talk, interact with other people. For the purpose of this article i choose to accept this as definitive evidence of my existence and your existence.
I can also verify at some basic level that the planet earth exists and that the universe exists. There are things that i can see, have seen and experienced. Depending on how much an individual person has physically travelled around the earth they will have more or less tangible evidence in this regard.
For the rest, i realised that i am reliant on what other human beings say.
By way of example, there are archaeological finds that support certain of my religious beliefs that i have seen on video. These finds are reported by a man i have met personally and who i believe to be trustworthy and a man of integrity. Yet i have NOT personally seen any of the evidence. I have not travelled to any of the sites he refers to. I have not spoken personally to any of his sources.
I ONLY have his word for it.
And, given that by his own admission some of what he reports is based on the evidence of other people and that he has not traveled to all the sites and personally inspected all the evidence that he cites, i ONLY have the word of his sources for that information.
In considering this data, i was forced to confront the reality that in the context of my understanding of the moon, the sun, the stars, the universe, in the context of my understanding of the seas, almost all animals and plants on earth, even my understanding of cities and places i have not visited, i am ENTIRELY dependent on what other human beings write, say, portray on television, etc.
Taking this further, it occurred to me that with regard to the ENTIRE body of evidence that any single human being uses to support their world view of creation, evolution or any other view, most arguments seem to me to be almost entirely dependent on what numerous other human beings have reported or on very narrow technical expertise which is not available to most of us.
I realised that even those human beings who are regarded as "most distinguished", "expert", etc only have personal exposure to a minute fraction of the total data that is available on the earth and, for the rest, they are dependent on the information that they receive from other human beings.
In addition to this, some of those who believe there IS a creator, claim to have had experiences with this creator and some of these claim to have some level of personal relationship with this creator and even claim that he speaks to them and they speak to him.
However, many of those who believe in a creator seem not to believe those who claim that this creator speaks to human beings today and even fewer, as far as i know, believe that it is possible to have a deep personal relationship with this creator today.
In other words, those who do believe in a creator do not seem to agree with one another on many many points. This seems to me to make it very difficult for those who do not believe in a creator to find a basis to reassess what they believe.
In fact, it seems to me that much of what is offered in argument against creation is actually argument against the beliefs of specific groups of people who believe in creation.
In addition, i realised a few days ago, that even though i claim to have a deep personal relationship with the Almighty and claim to hear his voice at some level, i have not heard him personally say anything to me about many of the issues that are addressed in this article. I also realised that what it has seemed important to me to address with him has not generally been associated with the subject of this article.
I therefore concluded that it is probably highly unlikely that there are many, if any, human beings alive today who claim to have a relationship with the creator who they allege exists, who have had any lengthy discussion with this creator with regard to the full scope of what is addressed in the debate with regard to creation versus evolution.
In fact, i concluded that, based on my life experience to date, most of the opinions of people who believe in creation is based on what other human beings have said and recorded, in particular, many of these people place a lot of reliance on "the Bible". And, the present editions of "the Bible" have been produced by human beings based on writings produced by other human beings.
Accordingly, once more, there is very little first hand evidence. It seems to me that whether one subscribes to evolution or to creation or to something else, it behooves us to acknowledge that almost everything we subscribe to is based on the opinions or teachings or ... of some person or persons who, for whatever reason, we personally hold to be relevant and authoritative.
One of the painful conclusions i reached in my deliberations is that the best i can say with regard to many things that i had believed at the time of starting this article pertaining to the debate regarding evolution versus creation is that i personally DO NOT KNOW - my opinions are based on third party reports and evidence which i have personally NOT touched, felt, seen or experienced.
It seems to me that this conclusion applies to every person on the planet. There are some to whom it applies less, since they have devoted decades of their lives to their particular areas of study. However, in the scheme of the entire picture of knowledge, they too, are largely reliant on what others have reported.
3. SOME IMPORTANT PREPARATORY POINTS
Arising out of the communication referred to in the introduction, particularly the communication with the television channel director, i reached a number of conclusions regarding the manner in which the subject of creation versus evolution is debated that it seems important to me to share at this point.
These are as follows:
3.1. JUDGEMENTAL LANGUAGE
I realised that i had used language in my emails that was judgmental and imputed intentional negative motive to people who consider evolution to be valid.
I also realised that people who subscribe to creation seem to be particularly prone to this. This is despite the fact that the religious disciplines to which many of these people claim to subscribe specifically forbid judging others.
At the same time, in my research, i observed that those who subscribe to evolution seem to be prone to other language which, when closely analyzed, seems to me also to be judgmental and dismissive.
I concluded that the use of judgmental language, name calling, insinuation, etc is a barrier to another person receiving a message, whatever that message may be.
Accordingly, it seems to me that an important step in resolving the debate with regard to evolution versus creation is that people who sincerely are seeking the truth choose to avoid such language.
This seems to me to be particularly important if one is willing to accept that in the final analysis there can only be one comprehensive explanation for any specific event or development.
In other words, it seems clear to me that whether one subscribes to evolution, creation or something else, it would be helpful to admit that there is only one correct answer.
This does NOT mean that i am suggesting that either "evolution" is correct or "creation" is correct. I am suggesting that there is a correct answer which may lie between these two themes.
I am also suggesting that "evolution" and "creation" are very broad and very loose terms that are understood differently by different people and, as such, they are not necessarily particularly useful descriptors.
I am also suggesting that the truth may lie somewhere between what a simplistic interpretation of "creation" or "evolution" suggests.
In fact, it seems to me that some of what evolution says is probably more or less accurate and some of what creation says is more or less accurate.
It therefore seems to me that between these two labels exists the possibility of a reality which could include what has been referred to previously as "an evolutionary process of creation".
Accordingly, what i am motivating in this point is that both sides stop judging the other and start considering whether it is possible that some of what others have to say has validity.
I am also suggesting that this entire subject is too complex to call ANY specific interpretation "correct" or "incorrect". It seems clear to me that in interpreting almost any piece of evidence there is a continuum on a scale of zero to ten between complete error and complete truth. In other words, it seems to me that there are many interpretations that may be partially accurate at some level and partially inaccurate at some level.
As i see it, the challenge thus becomes to determine what portion of any specific interpretation or opinion is valid or invalid rather than to attach total accuracy or total inaccuracy as the only possible "judgments".
3.2. CONSPIRACY IMPUTED
I also realised that in the correspondence referred to, my choice of words at least at some level, imputed that there is a conspiracy to deny creation and support evolution.
From personal experience i conclude that some or other form of "conspiracy theory" is quite common amongst those who subscribe to creation. I do not have significant evidence to support a view that this possibly happens amongst those who subscribe to evolution.
In the light of the previous point, i concluded that any form of "conspiracy" theory is a form of judgment and therefore not compatible with the values and disciplines that i claim to subscribe to.
In response to this i examined what i believe regarding "conspiracy" in some detail and concluded that i do NOT believe that there is any form of conspiracy.
I DO believe that people who support evolution do so sincerely on the basis of the data they have at their disposal and on the basis of their confidence and trust in others who support evolution.
I cannot find any possible reason why people would actively champion something that they know to be in error.
I do NOT think that people make errors deliberately nor do i think that people hold views and opinions that they consciously know are in error.
I hold that this applies just as much to those who support evolution as it applies to those who support creation.
It seems clear to me that none of these people are consciously in error.
This does not say that people do not have "blind spots" things that we are unable to see for whatever reason. In my personal life i have regularly found things life that i could not recognise i was doing but which i eventually came to "own".
By my own life evidence, i drastically changed what i believe relative to evolution versus creation in 1993 and, since then, i have drastically changed what i believe on any number of matters pertaining to religion and life generally.
It seems clear to me that the opportunity is there for every human being to make such shifts and to discover that what they have held to be true is not true.
It also seems clear to me that everyone of us filters what we see and hear through social, religious and other filters in terms of which we SUBCONSCIOUSLY hold to be true or not true.
Thus, it seems to me, that if one has a strongly held belief that the entire universe and all forms of plant and animal life including human kind were literally created in six periods of twenty four hours, one is going to find it difficult to comprehend the view point of someone who holds that this process took hundreds of millions or even billions of years.
The paradigms are so extremely opposed that reconciliation SEEMS impossible and labels that impute lack of integrity or lack of intellect or conspiracy or other negative therefore appear to me to be very widely applied.
This does not seem to me to be helpful in the context of mankind establishing what is true about these things. Whatever that truth may be.
3.3. ABSOLUTE POSITIONING
In reviewing the emails referred to earlier, i also noticed that the manner in which i presented my view was consistently in absolute terms.
In other words, i took a position that what i wrote was absolutely correct and left no space for disagreement or discussion.
In the introspection that this observation occasioned, i came to acknowledge that:
1) I do NOT have ALL truth.
2) That i do hold many of my opinions firmly and with deep conviction.
3) That there ARE opinions that i have changed at various times in my life and it is therefore possible that others have data that i lack which could cause me to change my opinions further.
Accordingly, i concluded that this form of positioning was NOT helpful and apologised accordingly.
This point is, in a sense, an extension of the previous point.
On reflecting on these findings i have also concluded that my training as an engineer at least at some level encouraged me to seek to come to a place of absolute certainty with regard to opinions regarding data that i had validated.
I have also concluded that the tendency for society to encourage us to move to absolute positions is widespread.
"I don't know" and "i am not sure" are not phrases that i read frequently in any form of publication or hear in any form of communication.
I read the articles on the web site referred to previously as consistently presenting statements which i experienced as absolute and positional.
I realised that this did not leave much margin for discussion.
It seems to me that taking an absolute position inherently creates a situation where there is almost no room for another party with a different viewpoint to do anything but respond in a manner that is judgmental and confrontational or, at least, will be experienced this way.
In the days after i made this observation and apologised to the person who had received my emails, i have given much thought to this subject. I have concluded that positioning is something i have done through most of my life and that it is something that i have experienced from others throughout of my life. I have also concluded that it seems to be endemic and that it is not serving me particularly well, nor, it seems to me, is this serving humankind particularly well.
I offer this for your consideration.
It seems to me that, in the context of evolution versus creation, that if significant players on both sides were to depart from absolute positions, the possibility of finding a middle ground which accommodates what is really true about both positions would be a possibility.
I have also found in the last few days that "i don't know", applied to many things that i had previous held that i "did know" has been an interesting and freeing experience.
The truth is that in many areas of my life, including my religious beliefs and beliefs regarding creation and evolution, i simply do NOT know. I have deep convictions and strongly held beliefs, but MOST of them are based on what other people have said or written and which i cannot verify at all or can only verify at enormous cost in time and finances.
I have also realised that there are many conclusions that i have drawn from my own experiences that it now seems to me are not nearly as absolute as i thought they were.
In fact, notwithstanding an honours degree in Civil Engineering with distinction, a PhD in Civil Engineering, listing in "Who's Who in the World" and various other international accolades, presentations at technical and business conferences internationally and publishing a professional book on "The Critical Factors For Information Technology Investment Success", there is MUCH that i don't know, much that i think i know and not a lot that i can demonstrably prove absolutely to be true!
It seems to me that this conclusion applies to every person on the planet if we are willing to confront such an unsettling reality.
It seems to me that if we are able to depart from absolute positioning we will find a basis for resolving "creation" versus "evolution" and also a basis for revolving conflict on earth.
This may be idealistic, i still think it is worth raising for consideration.
3.4. DEBATES ABOUT WORDS
In much of my research into this subject, it seemed to me that the debate was often about the meaning of words used by others rather than about the substance or essence of the subject.
There also seemed to be a lot of debate that was directed at refuting some other person's point rather than addressing what seemed to me to be the fundamental principles behind the other person's point of view.
I don't see how proving another person wrong really moves this debate forward. It is easy to do at some debating level, i think it is more challenging and more productive to try and see what IS true about what another person says and then to try and integrate this into one's own thinking.
I have tried to do this in this document. I am not sure that i have succeeded particularly well.
To the extent that i have not accomplished this i ask you to do what you can to focus on the essence of what i am trying to communicate rather on the details where i may be in error.
4. USE OF STATISTICS FROM GOOGLE.COM
In various parts of this article i have made use of statistics from the "Google" internet search engine at http://www.google.com.
I have chosen to do this as a simple statistical data gathering approach which can be verified by any reader with access to the internet.
In June 2000 Google was indexing approximately one billion internet web pages. At the beginning of May 2004 Google was searching over four billion web pages (help@google.com).
Entering the same words or phrases in the Google search engine that are used in this document will return the statistics that apply at that point in time. The number of pages will change as new web pages are created and old web pages are edited or removed. The statistics in this article were gathered during the second half of April 2004 and the first half of May 2004.
It is my expectation that if you undertake a search at any time in the next few years you will obtain numbers that are more or less in line with the numbers presented here. As such, this seems to me to represent simple, verifiable data that is potentially available to many who might read this article.
My rationale in using these statistics is to give some indication of the level of interest in the world in specific subjects. It may also give some indication of the level of specialisation in a specific subject.
Insofar as, in my experience, it takes anything from a few minutes to several days to create the content for a single web page and populate the page, the number of pages gives some indication of the extent to which people somewhere are investing time creating pages which mention the particular word or phrase or combination of words in question.
At some level, on the assumption that people create web pages in the hope that somebody else will read them, it seems to me that the number of web pages is also an indication of some level of expectation regarding the number of people who might look for web pages that refer to that subject.
Accordingly, i see these statistics as a basic first approximation sampling technique which gives some indication of level of interest and, by implication, some indication in some level of "belief" that such things exist and are relevant.
Thus, the existence of approximately 21,200,000 million web pages which contain the word "creation" one or more times indicates to me that there is a reasonably high level of interest in subjects that at least at some level refer to this concept and, by implication, a significant number of people who believe in such a concept at least at some level.
The existence of 18,100,000 web pages which contain the word "evolution" one or more times to me indicates a similar level of interest.
I personally do not think that any conclusion can be drawn from the three million web page difference in the count for creation versus the count for evolution. Both words can be used in contexts other than the context used in this document.
The form of reference used in this document to report Google search statistics is mostly of the form "word or phrase" (nnn,nnn) where "word or phrase" is either a single word in quotation marks, or a phrase in quotation marks or several words each in quotation marks or a phrase NOT in quotation marks. Where a phrase was searched with part or all of the search text NOT in quotation marks it is reported with a hyphen before and after the phrase such as -is there a god-. The hyphens were NOT used in the search.
In the case of a single word, this is the word that was searched in the Google search engine by entering the word into the search box and starting the search. For example "creation".
In the case of a phrase in quotes, the phrase was entered in the search box with the entire phrase in quotes, as it appears in this document. For example "argument from incredulity".
In the case of multiple discrete words or phrases, each word or phrase was entered as indicated in this document with quotation marks around phrases and other words standing alone in the search box. Such composite search text is shown between hyphens, for example -"is there a god" who is a creator- in this case "is there a god" is searched for an exact match and the words -who is a creator- are searched anywhere on the same page.
Phrases without quotes can give rise to very diverse responses may of which are unlikely to relate to the sense of the phrase, the occurrence of the major words in the phrase on the same page may give some indication of the level to which those words are associated. This is not a very significant indicator unless there are a number of keywords in the phrase which are relatively uncommon in general use.
These counts are approximate for many reasons. Some will be more approximate than others.
Some words such as "fear" have been appropriated for other uses, included in names of pop groups, etc. Statistics will include all of these instances.
Some words such as "bar" have multiple meanings as in a "bar of music" and in a place where alcohol is sold and a form of metal formed into a "bar", etc. In such cases, a search on the individual word will not deliver a statistic of any relevance.
I have endeavored to exclude the more extreme cases where i have been conscious that they exist but it is likely that there are other examples where i may have overlooked alternative uses of the word that may be obvious to you. In such cases, please disregard that particular statistic.
The thesis of this document is not fundamentally founded on these counts, they are offered as an indication of some widely available data that i think collectively points to some things which at some level seem relevant to me in building the overall case of this document. It is up to you whether you attach any significance to any of these numbers.
Where statistics have been offered for different forms of the same word, such as "fear" and "fearful" it is possible that there will likely be considerable overlap between different forms of the same word on the same web pages. Where the statistics are similar i do not think that they have much relevance. Where there are significant differences between counts then it may indicate some finer detail. I have searched on multiple word forms because i did not have any particular basis to select a specific word form and therefore offer the results of my research for your information.
I have not defined the words on which the searches were conducted unless it seems to me to be a relatively unknown term. I assume that most readers will be familiar with most of the words at some level. If there is a word that is cited and you are not familiar with it i suggest that you go to Google (enter http://www.google.com in an internet browser) and search on the word. On the bar near the top where the search result is reported the word "definition" appears towards the right. Click on (definition) and a definition of the word will be displayed.
In the format that the search results are presented, as set out above, (nnn,nnn) represents the number of web site pages that were found by the Google search engine when it searched it's database of information contained on the internet.
The nnn,nnn can range from a small number, such as "argument from incredulity" (578) that is 578 web pages to very large numbers such as "love" with 122,000,000 (122 million pages). Counts are to three significant digits.
5. ARGUMENT FROM INCREDULITY
In reviewing the "Talk Origins" web site referred to above i repeatedly found reference to something called "argument from incredulity".
The explanation of this is as follows:
"Claim CA100:
It is inconceivable that ____ (fill in the blank) could have originated naturally. Therefore, it must have been created.
This argument, also known as the argument from ignorance or "god of the gaps," is implicit in very many different creationist arguments. In particular, it is behind all arguments against abiogenesis and any and all claims of intelligent design.
Response:
Really, the claim is "I can't conceive that. . ." Others might be able to find a natural explanation; in many cases, they already have. Nobody knows everything, so it is unreasonable to conclude that something is impossible just because you don't know it.
The peril of negative arguments is that they may rest on our lack of knowledge, rather than on positive results. [Behe 2003]
The argument from incredulity creates a God of the Gaps. Gods were responsible for lightning until we determined natural causes for lightning; for infectious diseases until we found bacteria and viruses; for mental illness until we found biochemical causes for them. God is confined only to those parts of the universe we don't know about, and that keeps shrinking." (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA100.html)
I encountered the response that something was an "argument from incredulity" in many locations on the Talk Origins web site. A search on Google identified approximately 578 web sites containing the exact phrase "argument from incredulity". Brief visits to a few of these indicated similar definitions to that above.
I find myself severely challenged by the concept of "argument from incredulity" on two fronts.
Firstly, "Argument from incredulity" is used to directly refute a number of aspects of what i believe about life that i hold to be fundamentally and verifiably true. Some of these points i hold to reinforce my belief in a creator although the fundamental basis of my belief in creator is based on a series of experiences that are intensely personal and not provable or verifiable.
Thus, in the context of a commitment that i made in one of my emails to provide "solid provable evidence" of creation, i found my thesis seemingly largely and possibly entirely neutralised.
Secondly, I experience "argument from incredulity" to be in direct conflict with the principle of "reductio ad absurdum". This is a mathematical problem solving technique that i learned, i think in my second year in high school, and which i have applied repeatedly and effectively in solving problems in the physical realm in engineering and in many other areas of my life.
A search on "Google" for the exact phrase "reductio ad absurdum" identified approximately 41,000 web sites dealing with this subject.
A brief visit to "The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy" at http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/reductio.htm gave the following definition "Reductio ad absurdum is a mode of argumentation that seeks to establish a contention by deriving an absurdity from its denial, thus arguing that a thesis must be accepted because its rejection would be untenable. It is a style of reasoning that has been employed throughout the history of mathematics and philosophy from classical antiquity onwards."
The first part of this definition is basically what i recall from school.
This same web page makes reference to "Per Impossible Reasoning" and indicates that "reductio" style argument or analysis is important in many areas beyond mathematics, including in classical philosophy and in law.
Thus, i find myself confronted with "argument from incredulity" which seems to me to be directly in opposition to and contradictory to "reductio ad absurdum".
Previously i would probably have resolved this contradiction on the basis of citing that there are 41,000 web sites referring to "reductio" and "only" 578 referring to "incredulity" and used some language that would have been positional and judgmental.
Having realised that this approach probably does not work much of the time and that i have concluded that it is not particularly constructive, i now find myself with a challenge.
Since much of what i would previously have argued in support of creation based on "reductio ad absurdum" is, in the opinion of some, neutralised by "argument from incredulity", what do i do?
I would like to demonstrate my dilemma by reference to a few examples that i personally hold to be fundamentally verifiably true.
My life experience is as an engineer, designer, problem solver, analyst and consultant. I have been designing and making things since the age of five. I have at various times spent considerable time designing things and creating things. At times the things that i have designed have worked exceptionally well. At other times they have not worked at all or have not worked nearly as well as i thought they would.
I hold that this entire experience tells me that even relatively simple structures, mechanisms, computer software, etc require the input of a well trained and knowledgeable person in order to succeed.
I hold that i find no evidence anywhere to suggest that if i take a pile of timber of various shapes and sizes together with a diversity of appropriate fasteners and tools and place this material and equipment in a pile in my garden that i will return at some time to find some sort of practical and usable structure. I have never heard of such a case. All my experience tells me that to create even a very basic dog kennel requires at least a basic set of knowledge and experience and some tools. I hold it to be "absurd" that material can assemble itself into anything significant without external assistance.
My whole life experience tells me that if i leave the above mentioned material and equipment in my garden for years or decades the wood will rot and the fasteners and tools will corrode and deteriorate to a point where, in time, they will become increasingly unusable. If i live in a dry desert area these items may survive for decades while if i live on a tropical beach they may all but disappear within a decade. Another outcome would be theft of some or all of the items by humans or even some types of animal. I have no information that there is any possibility of a constructive outcome unless there is some human intervention.
Accordingly, i hold that this example proves that since i hold that man is much more complex than any structure or system that i have ever been exposed to directly or through television or books, that there IS a creator.
However, i find that "argument from incredulity" says that just because i cannot "conceive" that this is possible does not prove it is not possible.
I can follow the same argument with regard to the development of motor cars and aircraft.
I can argue that dwellings around the world differ and therefore that there is no evidence that a single form will become dominant across isolated continents with no communication and that this disproves non-intelligent evolution.
I can argue that all my experience tells me that to create a human being, in two genders, who have reproductive organs that fit together perfectly and which give rise to sensation that most people find pleasurable, cannot happen by accident. I hold that it is my understanding that virtually any man on the planet can join himself sexually to virtually any woman on the planet and, if they do it by choice, they can have a pleasurable sexual experience, to be only possible if there is a highly sophisticated engineer who designed this system.
I hold that the sun is consuming energy and that all my experience and education tells me that all things decay from a state of higher order to a state of lower order. I hold that i can verify that my motor car deteriorates, my house deteriorates, human beings deteriorate, etc and that this proves the existence of a higher power that created all these things.
I hold that the very existence of matter and the universe proves the existence of a creator.
"Argument from incredulity" neutralizes all these things and many others that i hold to be fundamentally true and it requires that i either have a head-on argument or that i see if i can find another way to prove my thesis that there is a creator.
I could also resort to arguing that arguments that there cannot be a creator are also an "argument from incredulity". It seems that way to me.
One conclusion that i drew during my research was that in very simplistic terms:
- It seems to me that in essence those who subscribe to creation believe something like "i am here, the universe is here and therefore there must be a creator, however i cannot explain where the creator came from and i choose not to think about this".
- It seems to me that in essence those who subscribe to evolution believe something like "i am here, the universe is here and i believe there was a big bang and i cannot explain where the material in the 'big bang' came from and i believe one day i will figure it out".
To me it seems that it requires as much faith to believe in a creator as it takes to believe that someday there will be an explanation for how uncountable billions of tons of matter came into existence from nowhere.
This causes me to wonder if there really is much of a gap at all between those who subscribe to creation and those who subscribe to evolution. It seems to me that at some level both subscribe to something that can be neutralized by "argument from incredulity".
However, since i have chosen to seek to do the best i can to avoid positioning myself and to avoid passing judgment, i choose to explore whether there is a way to prove my thesis without confronting whether "argument from incredulity" is valid or not.
I hope to do this in the remainder of this article.
6. PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT VERSUS INSTANTANEOUS CREATION
Having expressed some opinions in the previous section that indicate that i have strong resistance to certain aspects of what i have encountered being argued against creation, it seems important to indicate that i have other objections to some of what is argued against evolution.
Most specifically, i am personally familiar with a school of thought with regard to creation that indicates that creation took place in a series of twenty four hour periods based on certain passages in the book commonly known as "the Bible". It seems to me that on the basis that twenty four hours is an extremely small period of time in the context of thousands, millions or billions of years, this can reasonably accurately be referred to as "instantaneous creation".
Using the examples of motor vehicles and aircraft, as an engineer i have at times read and listened with great interest to reports about the progressive development of these reasonably complex machines which it seems to me are not nearly as complex as human beings.
I have been personally directly involved in the progressive development and application of computers in business since the early seventies. I have even recently published a book on the effective application of computer systems in business. I have personally experienced a hard and very challenging learning curve about what works with computers and what does not. I have invested hundreds of hours and even thousands of hours in projects that have failed totally. I have also had outcomes that i hold to be "successful".
In considering these examples, all the evidence at my disposal indicates that all these technologies have become more sophisticated and more reliable through a process that could be called "progressive development". This process could, as far as i understand the term, also be referred to as "evolution".
Accordingly, applying "reductio ad absurdum" i can draw a conclusion that complex systems do not happen instantly. From this i can begin to infer that it is unlikely that creation took place in six consecutive twenty four hour periods.
From the same data, i hold that i can conclude that complex systems do not evolve of their own accord.
I also hold that the evolution of aircraft and motor vehicles proves "survival of the fittest" at least at some level, although it also seems to prove to me that the technologically most "fit" machine frequently does NOT survive. Frequently survival in these industries has been determined at least as much by marketing and management as it has been determined by any intrinsic property of a specific machine itself. The VHS and Betamax video technologies are a frequently cited example of the principle that inferior technology well marketed will succeed above exceptional technology poorly marketed.
It seems to me that there is much more that can be drawn from these examples, both in support of certain cases offered by those supporting creation and other aspects in support of those supporting evolution.
From my personal knowledge and experience of plants and animals it seems clear to me that there is a progression in development which is consistent with a concept of evolutionary creation. There does not seem to me to be any reason why the creator could not have created the universe, the earth, plants and animals one step at a time over thousands, millions or billions of years.
Taking the above points a step further.
We have at times considered purchasing a fish tank for sea water fish. We have consistently been told that it takes about six months to progressively establish stable ecological conditions in such a tank before sea water fish have any hope of surviving. Based on other knowledge and experience i hold that this information is probably more or less accurate.
Extrapolating this information to consideration of the requirements for the establishment of a planet like earth with the biodiversity that exists i conclude that it is highly improbable that the earth was created and populated in six consecutive twenty four hour periods. I also find that believing in a creator does not require this to be so.
Accordingly, i must conclude that if there are people with solid evidence that the development of life on earth took millions or billions of years, i personally cannot offer any "solid provable" evidence to counter this and i cannot subscribe to a view that it took twenty four hours or some small multiple thereof.
At the same time, it seems to me that acceptance that animals COULD have evolved over millions of years as a principle for the development of the points in this document does not mean that i believe that humans in their present form necessarily came into existence a long time ago.
As i see it, humankind could have come into existence relatively recently, for example, say, six thousand years ago, but it might have taken millions of years of prototyping to reach this point. Other plants and animals might have been created and stabilized thousands or millions of years or more before this.
On another front, the basic complexity of the universe is to a limited extent visible from earth. There are clearly many stars. I therefore hold that at the very least the basic observations about the scope, complexity, geometry, etc of the universe is at some level accurate.
On a broader level, the introspection referred to previously brought me to a further conclusion in this regard. I hold that my life experience and engineering experience have practically verified many of the laws of physics, chemistry, mathematics, mechanics, thermodynamics, statistics, etc that i have been taught.
On reflection, i cannot reconcile what i know about the universe, the solar system and the planet earth with creation in a series of consecutive twenty four hour periods. It seems to me that to mechanically place every planet, sun, etc in it's place, impart precise trajectory and, in some cases rotation, to it and manage the complex interaction of gravitational fields, all within the first "twenty four hours of creation" violates a significant number of physical laws and would result in all sorts of dynamic instabilities and variable forces and would generally not be conducive to creating a stable sustainable universe.
Given that i understand the creator to have existed for eternity, i am not personally able to come up with any explanation for why He would force things to happen in such a short time when He had eternity to do it.
I have therefore concluded that i cannot offer any evidence to support creation in such a short space of time. Furthermore, on superficially examining the Hebrew of the first book in the "Bible" commonly known as "Genesis" and referring to the first chapter, which as far as i know, is the primary text used in support of Bible based instantaneous creation arguments, i find that the word translated "day" does not have the specific meaning of a twenty four hour period, it can also have many other meanings including a "space of time".
Strong's dictionary, as provided in the "P C Study Bible" software version 2.1 G, published by Biblesoft, allocates this word the reference number 3117 and defines it as "from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figurative (a space of time defined by an associated term), [often used adverb]:"
This word is listed as having been translated in the King James Bible into all the following English words "age, + always, + chronicals, continually (-ance), daily, ([birth-], each, to) day, (now a, two) days (agone), + elder, X end, + evening, + (for) ever (-lasting, -more), X full, life, as (so) long as (... live), (even) now, + old, + outlived, + perpetually, presently, + remaineth, X required, season, X since, space, then, (process of) time, + as at other times, + in trouble, weather, (as) when, (a, the, within a) while (that), X whole (+age), (full) year (-ly), + younger."
Accordingly, there does not appear to be any basis to allege that Genesis chapter one is referring to twenty four hour periods and it seems quite possible that creation took place during a series of discrete "spaces of time" during which various components of creation "evolved".
There are other aspects of the Bible which relate to seven days for creation which could be seen to offer greater challenges, however, i have come to the conclusion that these are matters of interpretation, not verifiable fact. This raises the question of the reliability of the Bible as a source, which is discussed in a later section and will therefore not be addressed here.
In light of the above, it seems clear to me that whether one believes in a literal seven day creation or in evolutionary creation over hundreds of millions or billions of years is a matter of personal choice, not a matter of evidence in support of "creation" or "evolution". I have come to hold that requiring belief in a literal seven day creation as evidence of the existence of a creator is not helpful. It also does not seem to be fundamental in any way, unless one chooses to make it so.
In line with what is written in previous sections, i have chosen to do my best not to get positioned on this particular issue and to seek to discover if there are some things which are more fundamental and more provable to support the existence of a creator.
7. OTHER RELIGIONS AND SPIRITS
At a superficial level, it seems to me that from my recent research and from my recollections of the debate from both sides during my life, the discussion of evolution versus creation seems to focus on what might be termed a "European" view.
It seems to be a debate between people whose recent origin seems to be primarily European. It seems to me that these people are divided into people who support creation from a primarily "Christian" perspective and people who support evolution from primarily a "Western scientific" perspective.
Specifically, the information at my disposal indicates to me that Muslims believe in a creator and creation. That same information indicates to me that it appears that Muslims have fundamental disagreements with Christians and Jews regarding some and possibly many aspects of what Christians have to say about the Bible and creation.
I am also under the impression that other groups in Asia, Africa and elsewhere have views on the subject of creation that are not in accordance with what i understand to be the Christian view and which also are not in accordance with what i understand to be the evolution view.
It seems to me that there is material cultural and religious positioning in what i know of the debate that it seems to me does not honour billions of people on this planet. I wonder if by taking more account of these other beliefs one might find a greater richness and complexity in the puzzle.
Furthermore, as best i can determine, billions of these people believe in spirits in one or other form. It is my understanding that there are a diversity of groups of people who believe in and claim to interact in some way with ancestor spirits, spirits of animals, spirits of trees, even spirits of rocks.
From personal experience, various Christian and allied groups hold various views including that the creator is a spirit, that men have spirits, that there are spirits called "messengers" or "angels" that have the ability to manifest with human form and that there are "demons". Different groups disagree on whether some or all of these exist or not.
My own reality is that i have had numerous spiritual experiences and that i am personally persuaded that the creator is a spirit, that human beings have spirits, that there are messengers and there are demons. I cannot prove any of this.
As best i can determine, the existence of spirits cannot be proved with any of the rules of scientific observation, etc that i have seen laid down by those who support evolution.
I also did not find any indication that the existence of spirits has been argued much, if at all, by those who support creation. As best i understand it, many, maybe even most of those who support creation do not believe there are spirits in the way that i understand billions of others to believe.
Insofar as i am personally very certain, based on numerous personal experiences, that spirits are real, i see this as presenting a challenge for evolution. Even if one can explain the evolution of animals, plants and man without a creator, i have great difficulty in understanding how spirits, which have no substance, could have evolved without a creator.
Here the "argument from incredulity" is really challenging. Those who don't believe that spirits exist would seem to be arguing from incredulity. Those who do, can be labelled with any number of labels because they cannot offer any scientific evidence. It would seem that, viewed from the perspective of people who do not believe spirits exist, all evidence of "out of body experiences" and other spiritual experiences must automatically have some negative label applied to them on the basis of the incredulity of those who lack evidence.
Once more i find myself neutralized by "argument from incredulity" from using evidence that i hold to be valid and verifiable based on my own experience BUT it seems to me that the other viewpoint is similarly neutralized.
I choose to continue to seek a way to present solid evidence in support of creation.
8. SOME OTHER ISSUES WITH CERTAIN RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF CREATION
As i was considering the points raised in earlier sections, i was also confronted with the reality that in addition to not accepting a six literal day creation, there were a number of other arguments raised in support of creation which seem to me to be major and which i do not agree with.
8.1. THE BIBLE CONTAINS ERRORS AND IS NOT THE "WORD OF GOD" / "WORD OF THE ALMIGHTY"
For many years i discounted the Bible completely. In my teens i found that what the church was teaching in a number of areas did not in any way correspond with what was in the Bible. For example, many denominations in the Christian the church teach that monogamy is ordained "by God" / "the Almighty" and that more than one wife is sin and yet the Bible contains reports of men with close relationships with the creator who had more than one wife.
As far as i am aware there is no dispute that the basic book called the bible contains manuscripts that are at least about 1,700 years old. There seems to be a reasonably large body of opinion that much of the "old testament" is at least 2,500 years old. There are some opinions that some of the "old testament", particularly the first five books are about 3,500 years old.
Even if the entire book is only 1,700 years old, it still seems to me that this is a reasonably ancient source of information and therefore should be taken into account as a source of historical information.
When i found the monogamy versus polygamy (many wives) conundrum with regard to the Bible as well as other examples, i put the Bible back on the shelf and did not look at it again for about twenty years.
Then, following a series of intense personal experiences i came to discover experientially that the creator was real.
At that time i was greatly impacted by a certain Christian church and chose to align myself with what they were teaching. Since my experience had been so intense, i assumed that everything these people taught was true.
In particular, although i could not intellectually accept it, i chose to believe that the Bible was the "inerrant Word of God [the Almighty]". "The Bible says it, that settles it" was a fairly common statement which i accepted.
In the years that followed, i read the texts commonly referred to as "The Old Testament" about ten times in many different translations. I read the texts commonly referred to as "The New Testament" about thirty five times. Also in many translations.
I became aware that there were different versions of the Bible that contained different texts. I also became aware that different versions of the Bible associated with the "Protestant" wing of the church were based on different manuscripts and that there were disputes as to which manuscripts were authoritative. I found that there were people in these disputes who were positioned behind certain sources. I experienced the debate as highly judgemental, was offended by it and chose to ignore it.
Through reading diverse translations it was also apparent that the English translations differed widely. Thus, i could not find any basis to claim that any particular English version was without error.
In time, i increasingly found that those who claimed that the Bible was the "word of God" [the Almighty] and without error did not agree amongst themselves and i also found that there were many passages that were ignored or explained away. Amongst other things, i found that i was not able to have a discussion with regard to passages relating to a man having more than one wife without having judgemental labels applied to me.
It increasingly seems to me that such inconsistencies must cause any person who does not believe in a creator and who finds the Bible attached to proving the existence of a creator a serious problem.
Some years ago, i found that i could no longer ignore the reality that there were different passages in the Bible that actually contradicted each other. The texts commonly referred to as "Matthew" and "Luke" present different genealogies for the man widely known as "Jesus Christ", "Matthew" and "Acts" present different accounts of how the man widely known as "Judas Iscariot" died. "Exodus" and "Deuteronomy" do not agree exactly on what the creator allegedly said when he spoke to the Israelites from the mountain in the wilderness.
I also found that there were people who were using something that amounted to an "argument from incredulity" to answer these concerns. I experienced this as being something like "because you cannot reconcile the genealogies does not mean they cannot be reconciled". I have encountered writings in support of evolution which seem to hold that such an argument is absurd - which seems rather ironic to me considering that these same writers make use of "argument from incredulity" to counter creationists who argue that some aspects of evolution theory are absurd.
I also concluded that i could not find a single body of text in the Bible where the writer made any claim whatsoever that all that they had written was the "Word of God" / "Word of the Almighty", i could find no declaration that any passage was without error and i could find no declaration by the people who had copied the manuscripts that they had made the copies without error. I could not even find a Bible where the compilers or any other person made a declaration that the entire compilation was "the Word of God [the Almighty]" or that it was without error.
Eventually, i conceded that as far as i can determine the Bible is actually a body of text written by men, it contains visible errors and it may therefore contain other errors. In some respects i reach this conclusion by applying "reductio ad absurdum" - since i can find one error i can find no basis to claim that it is without error.
To argue otherwise i experience as "argument from incredulity" which i have difficulty with, no matter which side uses it.
Accordingly, i choose NOT to believe the Bible is the "inerrant Word of God / the Almighty".
Eventually, i concluded that believing the Bible is the "inerrant Word of God / the Almighty" does not even accord with what the book contains in terms of the commandment not to worship anything except the creator. Believing that a book written, collated, translated and printed by men is "inerrant" does not seem to me to fit this commandment.
Since my belief in a creator was originally based on a personal experience and not on the Bible, accepting that it contains error and is not the "Word of God" [the Almighty] does not present me with any problem regarding believing in a creator.
Since i hold that the Bible does not prove the existence of a creator, it does not seem to me that this conclusion presents any obstacle to me in proving creation, other than further reducing the options open to me.
Notwithstanding the above, i hold that the writings contained in the book widely labelled "The Bible" do contain:
1) Statements that are attributed to the Almighty that include direct commandments and instructions.
2) Passages of text inspired by the Almighty.
3) Historical accounts of events involving the interaction of the Almighty with human beings.
4) Accounts of visions and other communications between the Almighty and human beings.
5) Diverse other information including information about things said and done by people that were not inspired by the Almighty in any way.
In other words, based on personal experience i hold that many and possibly most of the writings in this book are relevant and basically accurate in terms of guiding humankind towards better understanding of the Almighty.
Whether this is so or not does not seem to me to be relevant to the essential thesis of this article although it does support certain of the points that are made in this document. It is my intention that if you choose to disregard those points in this document that you consider to be based in any way on the Bible the rest of this document will stand on its own.
I also hold that there are many other writings, both recent and ancient, that compliment what is recorded in the writings in the Bible.
In reaching the above conclusions, i have also confronted something else that it seems to me does not work if one believes that the Bible is the "inerrant Word of God / the Almighty". It seems to me that such belief requires that every word and every action of every person reported in the entire book was actively directed by the Almighty. In other words, it seems to me that this belief requires that when a person lied, they were caused to lie by the Almighty, that when a person committed adultery or murder, they were caused to do this by the Almighty, etc.
In the light of the introspection referred to previously, i have concluded that this is not what i believe and that it does not accord with my own experience. I have also concluded that such interpretation, based on belief in the "inerrant Word of God" [the Almighty] is very likely to cause many people to reject belief in the creator outright. It seems to me that believing in the "inerrant Word of God" [the Almighty] requires one to believe in a creator who is manipulative and controlling and who sets people up to "sin" and then punishes them for this. I do not believe this.
Accordingly, i conclude that, for me, debating anything about the Bible is not helpful in resolving a debate about creation versus evolution.
8.2. OTHER ASPECTS OF RELIGION
I have also come to understand that there are many aspects of those religions that specifically claim to believe in a creator and a creation -- Christianity, Islam and Judaism -- that are not congruent within a particular religion.
There are major differences between groups / sects / denominations, etc and they argue and fight among themselves. This is particularly so in the case of "Christianity". There are even greater differences between these three religions.
To me it seems that this is likely to cause those who notice this to call into question more abstract aspects of what these religions and groups believe.
For example, if Christians cannot agree amongst themselves about physical issues like whether "baptism" is immersion of a consenting adult or sprinkling drops of "holy water" on a newly born infant, it seems to me that many people are going to have difficulty accepting their views on something as abstract as a universal creator and other such matters?
Accordingly, i have to admit that it seems to me that there is much that people who subscribe to creation believe that is not consistent, congruent or provable, even within the parameters that they themselves define for interpreting evidence.
I acknowledge that this must present major obstacles to any person who objectively wants to consider the case for creation.
This further limits the basis on which i can support my belief in creation.
In the sections that follow i will continue to endeavour to provide such evidence.
9. WHAT NEXT?
In the interests of preparing the way for the next point, it seems useful to sum-up where i find myself at this point in this document:
1) I have faith in the existence of a creator based on personal experience but, at this point, i cannot present solid, provable evidence of this.
2) I do not agree with "argument from incredulity" but i recognise it is an argument that is used and i choose not to dispute it at this point.
3) I find myself able to agree with an evolutionary model for creation.
4) I have great difficulty in accepting a model of evolution that does not include a creator although "argument from incredulity" neutralizes this as a basis for any case.
5) I have, over a number of years, as one who claims significant faith in a creator and claims some level of experience of the creator, come to accept that many things that people who support creation claim as being attached to believing in creation, are not so attached.
In the sections that follow, i will seek to explore other aspects of the debate between creation and evolution.