Graham,

"Is a post asking for evidence disproving the Genesis account of creation too far outside the generally accepted bounds of intelligent debate for it to be posted here?"

My answer Yes. But, since you will go ahead anyway, please let the initial post be at least articulate and free from cliche.

"While most Australians would regard it as a silly question, a large proportion of Americans wouldn't. So is it worth debating?"

My answer: No. The two sentences have no necessary connection, but I doubt we'll see a 'debate'. It's likely to degenerate into barrage and counter-barrage.

Creationism would be hard to debate on OLO, as perhaps, we wont find anyone who beleives in it.

The notion, that natural processes cannot bring about the Universe and humans, is linked to the determinism as a philosophical concept.
The idea that a god, with free wil created the Universe and Humanity (e.g., Adam & Eve), rather than physical processes, such as the second law of thermodynamics, the fusion of elements (in stars) and evolution and DNA, is evident with Creationist thought.

In way, I guess, Creationism has some commonality with the Crystal Sheres, wherein, space was/is believed by Christians to be the supernatural realm (the heavens) and Earth has a special place, detached from it. Creationism is the dynamic cousin to the Crystal Sheres.

Both Creation and the Crystal Sheres adhere to the the anthromorphic principle. Herein, Christians believe that the Laws of the Universe are different for us, our little planet is held special and humans are to not a product of evolution and ecology and DNA. We are not held a planet of a common third generation spectral "G" star and not primates. We are held by them to have been created by god in His image and according to His calandar.

Resistance to the "natural" is to be expected, from those, whom identify themselves with the supernatural.

Spikey,
"While most Australians would regard it as a silly question"

Quite right.I am Australian and confirm that most Australians regard
anything to do with religion as very silly indeed.

We also think that many Americans are very silly.

somehow i feel Graham is getting his discussion without ever actually posting his article - emerging slowly as it is from the primordial soup!

I agree with the sentiments of many posters that this forum is hardly able to cope with assessing the quality of scientific arguments for and against old earth/young earth and it would soon degenerate into 'pooh' slinging.

a related topic of some interest that has been raised already is the 'subjective element' of science.

Science as i understand it is great at examining reproducable events but can struggle with 'phenomena' and 'history'. Scientists are great at manipulating stats to acheive desired outcomes, it isn't neccessarily objective. (VIOXX anyone?) So even reprodable events aren't immune to bias. Reproducable events however can be studied by someone else and the data re-processed leading to a more accurate assessment and we place tremendous confidence in its acheivements.

When it comes to recent history you have written subjective records from particular viewpoints and archeology which isn't quite as objective as reproducable science due to the biases of the archeologist and their interpretation of what they see. And that is just looking at recent history!

Does science become more vulnerable to subjective influences the further back it attempts to look?

McFly,

You say: "somehow i feel Graham is getting his discussion without ever actually posting his article - emerging slowly as it is from the primordial soup!"

I for one assumed the item in question was the forum discussion that followed under the title: "Any evidence that the Bible Genesis account isnt the truth?"http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2236

Actually the discussion that GrahamY started was more interesting and helpful than that the one that followed.

I was very interested in Graham's comment: "When I started OLO I had a vision of spirited, but reasonably polite debate, a bit like you might get at a Liberal Party, or presumably Labor Party, branch meeting. I expected there to be nutters and know-alls, but ultimately a spirit of goodwill and tolerance. It's not necessarily how it has panned out, and I'm wondering whether too laissez faire an approach might have caused that."

In the end, Graham decided: "OK I'm going to post the thread, with a link to this discussion. But I've got a limited appetite for it, and I think the generaly consensus is that most do, so anyone interested in the issue should get into the thread when it goes up!

I'd also appreciate it if we killed this thread off, but I guess that won't happen for a while yet."

We proved his point!

Because, McFly, if 2+2=4 today, it's reasonable to assume that it did 2000 years ago.

Also, what's being argued is not that science is absolutely correct about the origins of the universe, but that if it's incorrect about any detail, then Genesis must be the only possible alternative.

Interestingly, mathematicians theorise that mathematical rules begin to break down when applied to astronomical sums, but exactly what rules DO apply is unknown.

But using creationist reasoning, if 3 trillion gazillion + 3 trillion gazillion doesn't necessarily equal 6 trillion gazillion, then it must equal the colour blue, a soccer match, and fifteen Toyota Landruisers, if that's what my religion's holy book says.