Talk:Creation biology/temp
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Creation biology is an attempt to study biology from a creationary perspective. According to its proponents, it is a synthesis of science and religion, as it attempts to draw from both sources in developing its ideas. Creation biology proponents forcus their critiques on the specific aspects of biology associated with long term evolution and common descent, but do not object to many parts of modern biology, for example physiology, the structure of the cell, and the genomic basis of life.
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[edit] Creation biology differences from the mainstream
Creation biology is based on the idea that God created all life on the planet in a finite number as described in Genesis. As such, creation biology has had a number of separately proposed ideas from groups associated with Young Earth Creationism to the advocates associated with the Intelligent Design movement. The following are the major differences of belief that the creation biologists have from the evolutionary biology
- Biogenesis, that is, the idea that life can only come from life, and cannot arise from non-life. This runs contrary to naturalistic theories of abiogenesis.
- Teleology, that is, the idea that God designed life with intricate and interconnected components for a purpose, and then determined that they were "good." This runs contrary to the empirical model of modern science which claims that there is no empirically observed instance of supernatural influences in nature..
- Baraminology, that is, the idea that life was originally created in a finite number of discrete "kinds" or "baramin", and that while these kinds had the ability to vary significantly within their kind, one kind cannot interbreed with another kind, and new kinds cannot arise spontaneously. This runs contrary to the theory of universal common ancestry, that is, that all life on the planet is related via macroevolution.
- Irreducible complexity, that is, the idea that many components of life are composed of interdependent parts in which the absence of one part would cause the entire system to fail, making it extremely unreasonable to believe that they came about one component at a time as held by evolution, and much more reasonable to believe they were designed and assembled together, for a purpose. This runs contrary to the idea that all biological mechanisms are merely the result of slow evolutionary processes, one mutation at a time.
- Specified complexity, that is, the idea that genetic information is both complex and specified, and that such information cannot increase through random functions, but only through the intervention of an intelligent designer. This runs contrary to the idea that all biological mechanisms are the result of slow evolutionary processes, one mutation at a time.
[edit] Biogenesis
Here about abiogenesis vs. biogenesis
[edit] Teleology
Discussion about the nexxus of religion and science.
[edit] Baraminology
Creationists believe that life was originally created in a discrete number of forms, called "kinds" (also known as created kinds, original kinds, baramin, or Genesis Kinds). The term "kind" is based directly upon Biblical Scripture, specifically from the description of creation given in Genesis, which states:
- And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind . . . And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind . . . And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so." (Genesis 1:12-24)
Kinds are a form of clade, in that they indicate lines of ancestry among forms of life, but they do not coincide with any particular level of taxon. In some cases, such as humanity, kinds are declared by creationists to coincide with species. In other cases, such as Felidae, they may be equivalent to the family level of taxonic classification (c.f. Wayne Frair).
[edit] Baraminological underpinnings
The creationist "kind" is assumed to be based upon an idea that life in the past exhibited greater genetic diversity and heterozygosity than life today, in the form of "kinds" analogous to the liger, but with what creationists describe as "a more complete and diverse genome".
This indicates, to the creationist, that speciation takes place through degradation of the genome, as natural selection and reproductive isolation, inbreeding, and genetic drift caused animals to adapt to their environment by the loss of capacity to adapt to other environments. The increased number of genetically independent species is claimed to be a side-effect of a degrading genome, but it is assumed that the evolutionary process cannot improve a kind beyond the quality of the original kind.
In contrast to mainstream biology, this creationist idea asserts that kinds were created intact, that the major speciation events took place during an extreme population bottleneck, inbreeding, genetic drift, and rapid dispersion immediately after the flood, and therefore the major speciation events took place within the space of 1000-2000 years as opposed to thousands of generations and millions of years required in the modern evolutionary synthesis. They also assert that the mainstream scientific documentation of transitional forms between higher taxa bear only a superficial resemblance to one or the other, and show gaps which they claim are not feasilby bridged by any mechanism proposed by mainstream science.
[edit] Hypothesized kinds
Creationists have proposed a handful of possibilities for the created "kinds":
- Humanity Creationists reject any and all claims of evidence for a common ancestor between homo sapiens and other great apes.
- Felidae Creationists from Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research have proposed that the original kinds were comparable to the Liger and the Tigon.
- Camelidae, including both the camel and the llama, which are reproductively compatible, their hybrid offspring being known as "Camas."
- Crocodylia, to include all the varieties of alligator, crocodile, and gharial.
Creation biology looks to the animals visible in the fossil record (which flood geology interprets as having mostly been formed during the flood) as evidence that antediluvian life was much more diverse than life today.
A canonical list of kinds has not been constructed, and such examples are extremely provisional (which the exception of humans, on which there is a strong creationist consensus).
[edit] ID models
[edit] Irreducible Complexity
Behe's idea and Paley's arguments. Old debate or reinvorgated by Behe's popular book? etc.
[edit] Specified Complexity
The rest of the article that doesn't go in created kinds probably goes here. We need to specifically reference Dembski who is the one who invented the idea. As it stands right now, the article seems very weak in this area. I may try to rework it in the future.
Here is the current section, which needs reworking:
The argument is that changes in biological structures cannot create new "genetic information". This is a claim explicitly rejected by mainstream science. These creationists point out that the first single-celled creature would not have had the genetic information for eukaryotic features. To evolve from that first single-celled creature to today's mammals, reptiles, and birds, evolution would have need to add genetic information. (need citation to Dembski's work or at least a coherent description of what this paragraph means)
Creationists claim that mutations are the only source of new information proposed by evolution (is this really true? can we provide a cite?) and reject the concept that natural selection can create the constraints necessary to allow for an introduction of information into the genome. Rather, they claim that mutations can only be information-destroying mechanisms. They further state that information-increasing mutations have never been observed (do they claim this?), a claim totally disputed by mainstream biology.
Creation biology is often accused of being non-scientific or anti-scientific, on the grounds of the non-falsifiability of scriptural premises. Creationists claim it is the most truly scientific and parsimonious available for adaptible complexity, and it is, in fact, the modern scientifc consensus which is unscientific.
[edit] External links
- Creationscience.com An on-line book, "In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood"
- Dogs breeding dogs? "Upholding the Authority of the Bible from the very first verse."
[edit] Sources
Sarfati, Jonathon, Refuting Compromise, Master Books, 2004.
Keep forks out of the main categorisation system. [[Category:Creationism]] [[Category:Pseudoscience]]
