You could just keep reading the Wikipedia article you quoted. It’s right here.
Mainline Protestants and the Catholic Church reconcile modern science with their faith in Creation through forms of theistic evolution which hold that God purposefully created through the laws of nature, and accept evolution. Some groups call their belief evolutionary creationism.
Theistic evolution, or evolutionary creation, is a belief that "the personal God of the Bible created the universe and life through evolutionary processes.
Maybe just read the source to which you linked?
There’s nothing there which says they use “creationism” in a way which excludes non-Christian views.
On the basis that they believe life on earth was created by extraterrestrial beings.
Yes.
The definition used by secular sources such as this one.
The argument used to support the Raëlian view of creationism does not attempt to prove that alien beings created but rather develops a polemic against the theory of evolution.
The message in essence explains how life on Earth was not a random result of evolution or work of a supernatural God, but instead a deliberate creation using DNA for genetic manipulation and cloning to make human beings literally in their own image, i.e., scientific creationism.
Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.
what is the definition of evolution by the way? if its just variation over time (in the gene pool) then about 100% of creationists also accept evolution.
The theory also includes the conclusions drawn from evidence such as universal common descent. We would also need to add mechanisms like speciation. I have also seen creationists reject the idea that mutations can produce new variation that they deem to be new information.
but by definition evolution it is just genetic variations in the population over time. this is official definiton as far as i aware. but again- this definition make no sense.
What you are describing are the mechanisms. The larger theory includes the evolutionary histories of life.
I also don’t understand why the processes of mutation, selection, drift, and speciation don’t make any sense. We can observe all of those mechanisms occurring in living populations.
Call it what you will. The point is that since conventional evolutionary theory can accommodate a great number of potential observations, it would be a fool’s errand to base one’s investigation on finding things that cannot possible be accommodated by conventional evolutionary theory.
I tentatively suggest separate ancestry of bacteria and archaea (from which eukaryotes evolved).
My approach is open to evidence from all scientific fields. If there is evidence that a simpler state existed prior to LUCA, my approach will need to deal with that.
So what is your definition of creationism? Any view which involves creation, even if it’s entirely through the laws of nature? That would mean that all Christians are creationists, including Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins. Which would be contrary to how most people understand creationism.
To me, your approach reminds me of the way some conservatives will label any state intervention as “communism”, thereby associating it with a term with negative associations, even if by so doing, they water down the term they’re using.
It’s right there in the text I quoted:
First, we prefer EC [Evolutionary Creation] because we are, essentially, creationists. We are not mere theists. We believe that God—by the authority of the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit—created all things. Our beliefs about God and creation come first. “Evolutionary” is simply an adjective that describes creation and marks our acceptance of evolutionary science as the best scientific explanation we have for the diversity and similarity of life.
The bolded sentence makes no sense unless the authors see “creationism” as something that distinguishes their view from “theism” broadly understood.
They do? Where?
You’ve quoted an anonymous blog post, a book on “controversial new religions”, and a book on autopsy practices, none of which actually contains a definition of creationism.
Depends on what you mean by evidence.
If you mean “data that would convince anyone, including a hardcore critic”, then I don’t have that. As I’ve said several times on here, I consider my views a hunch, not something I expect to convince others of.
If you mean “data that would exist if the hypothesis is correct, but which could also be compatible with other hypotheses”, then I have cited such data in the posts in which I lay out my hypotheses. A good place to start would be in the first post in this thread.
That’s a good definition. Of course, by that definition my views can’t be considered creationism.
Just because a theory can accommodate a great number of potential observations does not mean it can accommodate all observations. There are numerous observations that evolution can’t accommodate, such as numerous and obvious violations of a nested hierarchy among vertebrates.
In the modern theory of evolution, these are products of evolution. They wouldn’t represent the first life or the simplest life. You are assuming that the last common ancestor is the first organism, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Therefore, using common features of prokaryotes or archae is not going to give you the model you need.
Well your response to such evidence, such as the potential lack of a membrane in the common ancestor of archaea and bacteria, was that this means we have abandoned cell biology so the evidence doesn’t count. That seems a bit inconsistent to me.
Disregarding that however, on the topic of evidence for pre-LUCA evolution, there is evidence that the two classes of aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetases, two separate enzyme superfamilies, ultimately derive from the opposite strand of the same ancestral gene.
Carter CW Jr, Li L, Weinreb V, Collier M, Gonzalez-Rivera K, Jimenez-Rodriguez M, Erdogan O, Kuhlman B, Ambroggio X, Williams T, Chandrasekharan SN. The Rodin-Ohno hypothesis that two enzyme superfamilies descended from one ancestral gene: an unlikely scenario for the origins of translation that will not be dismissed. Biol Direct. 2014 Jun 14;9:11. doi: 10.1186/1745-6150-9-11.
This is evidence both for universal common descent, evidence for a substantial pre-LUCA evolutionary period, and for the evolutionary origin of coded protein biosynthesis in some kind of RNA-peptide world. Besides that, it’s also downright and deeply fascinating.
sure. any genetic chenge that move on. so bscially any genetic change in the population is evolution. it means that almost 100% of creationists accept evolution.
Yes, as long as it’s at least initiated deliberately by a conscious being (either natural, supranatural, or supernatural).
Yes.
No. I’ve already shown you that creationism is used with a much broader definition than the one you’ve been using. There’s Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Progressive Creationism, Evolutionary Creationism, and Scientific Creationism, even Atheist Creationism, to name a few.
Previously you tried to tell me that creationism was incompatible with evolution, for example, while quoting from an article which stated explicitly that some creationists accept evolution, in a model of creationism referred to as “Evolutionary Creationism”.
No. The problem here is that you think “creationism” has a negative association, so you don’t want yourself associated with it. I don’t view the word the same way, and I am explicit about referring to myself as a creationist; specifically, an Evolutionary Creationist.
Yeah sorry that’s a distinction between their views and theism, not their views and “non-Christian views”. I doubt you would be able to convince them that orthodox Jews, and conservative Muslims, are not creationists.
Maybe just read their websites? How about the Raelian site which is actually called “Atheist Creationist”. How about this statement?
This year, on December 13, will be the 45th anniversary of Rael’s encounter with a representative of the scientists who created us, and an opportunity for Raelians from all continents to gather in Okinawa, Japan, and celebrate the scientific advances that increasingly validate the ‘atheist creationist’ theory that we propose.”
Boisselier indicated that Raelians around the world will intensify their actions to show how today’s science points to a “scientific creationist” explanation of our origins and how it will be conducive to a bright future with science and consciousness being our guiding forces, as opposed to leaving everything in the hands of “chance” or an “imaginary god”.
These references aren’t hard to find.
In other words, I deliberately quoted a wide range of sources which all use a definition of “creationism” which includes the Raelians. So whatever definition of “creationism” you’re using, it’s obvious there are a lot of people out there who aren’t using it. It’s clear these people are using the same kind of definition I’m using; “Any view which involves creation, even if it’s entirely through the laws of nature, as long as it’s at least initiated deliberately by a conscious being (either natural, supranatural, or supernatural)”.
If it could also be compatible with other hypotheses, but can’t be demonstrated to be exclusively compatible with yours, then it’s certainly not great evidence for your hypothesis.
but that is the problem. if you will look at the “official definition” you will see that it doesnt necessarily include a universal common ancestry. its a problem since in many discussions some say that evolution is a fact when they actually refer to just variations over time.
I haven’t said that conventional evolutionary theory can accommodate all observations. But having to limit my design investigation to those areas where the conventional theory makes concrete predictions would mean that I would have to ditch my approach unless I could somehow make it predict bats with feathers and dolphins with gills - at which point it would promptly become falsified.
I suppose that outcome would be preferable for an ID critic, but as someone interesting at investigating a design inference at the origin of life, not in the origin of vertebrate groups, I’m afraid I’ll have to take a pass.
As I said before, if there is evidence of such simpler states, my investigation will have to consider that. The fact that simpler states are required by conventional evolutionary theory isn’t the same thing.
That is not a fair or accurate description of my position. I certainly don’t think the evidence “doesn’t count”. Indeed, as I was the one who introduced it to the discussion to begin with, that would be a weird position for me to take.
I think this is a good illustration of the distinction between an observation and one’s interpretation of it.:
Observation: The membranes of archaea and bacteria have distinct chemistries and the respective enzymes of their lipid biosynthesis show no sign of homology.
Design interpretation: Archae and bacteria were independently designed.
Non-design interpretation: The common ancestor of archaea and bacteria did not have a membrane.
One can have specific reasons for favoring one interpretation over the other. Personally, my own holistic view of the cell as a complex, integrated system leads me to favor the design interpretation. And one can use one’s preference for a particular interpretation as an impetus for further investigations in order to pry the two hypotheses apart. For example, the hypothesis of an independent design of archaea and bacteria would predict that other similar discontinuities between the two cell types would exist.
But disagreeing with someone else’s interpretation of the evidence doesn’t mean that one thinks that it “doesn’t count”.
This is indeed an interesting piece of research and a well-written article. As for whether it’s evidence for a simpler, pre-LUCA state, allow me to return to my previous distinction between different types of evidence - “evidence that would convince anyone” vs. “evidence that would exist if the hypothesis was correct”.
The sense-antisense complementarity between the conserved cores of Class I and Class II aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases is certainly something we would expect to see if the two superfamilies ultimately derive from the opposite strands of the same ancestral gene. It would be entirely rational for a researcher to take this result as an impetus to further investigate the hypothesis.
But I don’t see this as evidence that must compel accept of the hypothesis in everyone, in the sense that one would have to drop one’s own investigation of a competing hypothesis. One of the reviewers of the paper makes an interesting point:
The present work by Carter et al. places weight on Rodin and Ohno’s own statistical analyses using permutation tests: ‘jumbling’ as according to R. Doolittle. By design, these jumbles are not constrained to conserve sequence, particularly the critical active site motifs of the two classes of aaRS. Should we not instead attempt to model the space of all possible sequences with primordial Class I-type and Class II-type aaRS activities, and use this as a condition when measuring the probability of complementarity? What indeed are the spaces of all shortest protein sequences with Class I-type or Class II-type enzymatic activities comparable to (those of) urzymes? Or to frame the question differently, how ‘designable’ are the Class I and Class II aaRS active sites (‘Sequence optimization and designability of enzyme active sites’ by Chakrabarti et al. (2005) PNAS 102(34):12035)? Were the four motifs—HIGH, KMSKS, Motifs I and II and the extended secondary structures studied by the authors of the present work—inevitable products of selection for these activities? If the motifs and structures were inevitable, then perhaps their encoded head-to-tail antisense complementarity is just a remarkable coincidence.
A design hypothesis would predict that the sense-antisense complementarity is the result of some functional/structural constraint. This suggests an avenue for further research and shows that design thinking can lead to expectations that differ from those of the non-design approach.
What I am saying is that your model starts with an unjustifiable assumption, that common features shared by modern bacteria and archae are a valid representation of the first life.
That’s not true. You are ignoring the evidence about the difference between start and stop codons. It’s explained perfectly by evolutionary theory. It’s perfectly internally controlled.
Is that why your approach is anything but open to that, Krauze?
Let’s keep our labels straight. We’re the people doing things. YOU are the armchair critic. You’re showing no real interest in investigating that I can see.