Evolution vs. Creation

[Pendragon]

More back to the topic. Concerning the fossil evidence for human evolution, it often consists of a single skull. Now I don't deny said skull exists. I'm just wondering if one can infer an entire sub-race of man from one skull. Let us say they had found the skull of one Andre the Giant, for example. Besides his enormous size, Andre also had half again as many teeth as an ordinary man. THAT would have sent the old gong off, no? I recall someone speaking of an infinite universe with infinite possibilities, thus making evolution possible. By the same logic, it makes creationism possible. Matter of fact, it makes ANYTHING possible. Somethings are more PROBABLE than others. There is the crux of the matter. I still believe in God, a creator. But evolution is the most PROBABLE reason why we do not all look the same, etc. I belive I posted the math for the probibility above somewhere. It, chance, is UNLIKELY, but still REASONABLE with some limitations. No species changing into another, for example, just each species evolving into a diffrent form.

[coffeestained]

I am really sorry for my informal and mis-use of the english grammar, for I am a very ignorant fool who has not yet master the English language,

Don’t be sorry, the first W in www stands for “world”, I just found it a bit (well, more than a bit) ironic…


Perhaps my post will be easier if I write them in Chinese or French, but oops, you can't read Chinese or French, or can you?

The irony bell chimes again.
Another typical American trait.
If I may suggest: n’ assume jamais que…
(never assume…).
Admittedly, my French is shaky and I have a very cute colleague from China & I wouldn’t mind her sitting close and translating, so do whatever you feel comfortable with.
Maybe I’ll respond in German or Italian…


I like to think that humor has little to do with intelligence,

Can’t say I agree in the least there…


Then I went to the Highschool that I am currently in, and my past views have been shattered into pieces, i have met more intelligent people in my grade than any other place that I have been to. Perhaps we have a different life experience.

Well, yes, my life experience is based on exactly that, a life experience, not an isolated high school case. Last I heard America was a bit bigger than a high school.

This, to get it slightly back on-topic, is about as asinine as finding a old chest engraved with “Jesus’ Brother” and insisting this is proof of a quasi-fictional (at best) character…


I apologize again for my grammar mistakes, for it is still not up the standard, I am still learning and improving, that's why I am in school right? But, I must say it is kind hard to keep up 3 languages while you are only useing one of them.

No blood, no foul. You’re doing fine. As I said, I just found it quirky…


Please refrain from bringing current politics into discussion and tyr to stay on topic! ;)

It all kinda messes in though, current politics: “intelligent design” (I tried not to laugh while typing that); American notions/beliefs/stupidity.


In a story (or maybe analogy) like that of Adam and Eve, that Eve allegedly grew from one of the ribs of Adam, does this perhaps imply a very fast example (within a person's lifetime) of an evolving cell? If, indeed, Adam consisted of the first person, and, in a way, another corresponding person literally grew from an odd place of his body, this has much relevance toward a mitosis-like division between two eukaryotic or prokaryotic cells.

Aside from thinking children’s tale, tales believed to be The Truth while being *clearly* just ‘borrowed’ (as the lawyers of the time weren’t yet established I refrain from “stealing” or “plagiarized”) from older texts is outlandish, your thought is…interesting.


Just one quick thing, evolution is just as much a question of faith as is creation, or religion in general. When a thing is not proved, it is a leap of faith in either direction.

“not proved”?
Um, no.
And no again.


I belive I posted the math for the probibility above somewhere.

No. You posted about a card trick. And called it science.
Go play your game of cards for ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh billions of years and see what happens.

[Pendragon]

No. You posted about a card trick. And called it science.
Go play your game of cards for ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh billions of years and see what happens.Funny. I got this "card trick" out of a college level math book. Probability math remains the same whether you use cards or whatever you like. With each additional condition that has to be met, the odds get longer. That is no trick, that is scientific fact. Cards was a simple example I felt anyone should be able to understand.

[coffeestained]

Funny. I got this "card trick" out of a college level math book. Probability math remains the same whether you use cards or whatever you like. With each additional condition that has to be met, the odds get longer. That is no trick, that is scientific fact. Cards was a simple example I felt anyone should be able to understand.

You could use some further reading.
And needless to say you invalid “example” of cards-to-science is about as hollow as, “the bible says it’s so!”
Try reading, for example, Full House by Stephen Jay Gould.
There’s even some math stuff in there for you (yes, a science book that talks about the death of .400 hitting in baseball.).
And for the record, you can feel comfortable read SJG, he believes in your invisible people (or person, which is even more warped, as most seem to think) too.

Biology…a deck of cards. Um, no.

[Edmond]

The bottom line is, people don't care, Creationism, if you believe in that, fine, if you believe in Evolution Fine, I think the problem is not about where will came from but where we are going to..

The technologies we invented in the last 2-3 centries have disfigured our mother earth, the polluted air in industrial cities, the radiation around former nuclear test sides, factories have helped to created foul smelling and toxic rivers. WE ARE DESTROYING HUMANITY, why are we so selfish? We are not the master race, human race is just like a dogs, or grasshopper or an ant, living on the planet that was not design exclusively for Huamns.(actually no, because animals only eat very few of each other for the purpose of satisfying hunger, People nuke each other for much more sinister reasons and killing thousand times more, so, I guess that's the difference between Human and Animals) it is our home, and theirs also. If you don't wish having a stranger coming into your house and trash your home, then don't do this to mother earth.
The enviorment is vitally important not only to our survial but animals and our descendents as well. Why are here wasting time arguing where we came from, as if it is of any importance, we should argue where we are going to go, is it to doom( the direction we are heading right now), or save our planet, by not wasting too much natural resources.
The Japanese have done a great job in my opinion, they recycle and use wind/solar powers, this is what I hate about the americans: they drive enormous cars that often occupying only one person, and look what is happening now, China is getting onto the energy bandwagon as well, one day there will be no gas left, and no atmosphere, or any living creatures just sand, sand.

-E.Brume

[Pendragon]

You could use some further reading.
And needless to say you invalid “example” of cards-to-science is about as hollow as, “the bible says it’s so!”
Try reading, for example, Full House by Stephen Jay Gould.
There’s even some math stuff in there for you (yes, a science book that talks about the death of .400 hitting in baseball.).
And for the record, you can feel comfortable read SJG, he believes in your invisible people (or person, which is even more warped, as most seem to think) too.

Biology…a deck of cards. Um, no.
For the record, I'm comfortable reading anyone regardless of what they believe. If you look back up the list, I've read Charles Darwin, even posted that I wished people would at least have the deacency to quote the man right. I never claimed to have all the answers. But I think Mendel's reserch would tend to back up that the more factors that must be met to insure a valid result the higher the odds of acheiving said result. If that means I'm living in la-la land, I'm sure trying to see things from other points of view, to further my knowledge. That's why I'm the "Great Questioner." I question first, believe latter. :) (if at all).

[Adelheid]

Woah!! *whistles*

Where HAS this thread gone to since I last saw it a few days ago???!!!! *drops mouth* :D

I think sometimes that people tend to look on only ONE side of the argument... and only that which is published... most books (and movies that start off with billions and billions of years ago.... yeah right! :rolleyes:) now take it for a fact that evolution is undisputably true...

Yet there is undenyable a LOT of holes in the theory which can never be patched up by men to make it LOOK credible, simply because it's all a lie from the beginning! Look now.... at your calendar.... for example. If the world did come about as you evolutionists say it did (by a big bang, blah, blah) then obviously the world wouldn't be surviving now.... All men's efforts cannot even produce a little "living planet" then how can you peoples ever suppose a MISTAKE is suppose to accomplish that! Goodness! What blind people are who refuse to believe the truth!

Then no. 2 mistake..... The days and the seasons have not changed. Imagine that for the first year, your winter might be in June -August (for Aussies) and summer in December-Feb but then asthe years go by, everything is going to change! Summer would be in June-Aug and Winter in Dec-Feb! It isn't a pure chance that can cause such a brillant universe to come about.... come on where is all your scepticism when it cames to this! Believingthe Bible, which has little wording problems (which can be done away easily enough) you pick out as if it means much. Yet all the things your theory is founded upon aren't even that secure in the first place, and yet you use a little rag cloth to bind up the forlorn gap growing bigger each day, frantically trying to sew it all up before it rips apart...

Come on. This won't do. Reality is cruel if like adilyoussef, you live is a land of illusions amd dreams, untiol you wake up to harsh truth one day, which will then demand of you what good did u do with the truth. Then of course, you can't deny and say you never knew the truth, for I'm telling you the truth NOW....

But it's up to all of you. The truth is in your hands. Do what you want with it. Believe or deny. It's your choice. The world is all about choices. :nod:

[coffeestained]

The bottom line is, people don't care,

Um, then why is this thread so long? And why is it current semi-Headline News?


Creationism, if you believe in that, fine, if you believe in Evolution Fine, I think the problem is not about where will came from but where we are going to..

Snide’ness aside, I do pretty much agree with you. I’m open to the idea of past “creators” (note the plural, as the idea of just one is idiotic to the extreme), but something that is long gone and has absolutely nothing to do with a “god” that desires subservience.
The belief in “god” is a *need*, and says far more about the individual(s) then it does about non-entities.
But all in all, the “creator” thing is, to me, unlikely.
Although the idea that we are a failed experiment does come to mind every time I watch the news or see another human being.

Science, and much of the course of “evolution”, is simple fact. But I truly gain nothing from trying to convince anyone of this. They can believe The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a true story for all I care…and I find the idea of debating someone that subscribes to a “literature” forum but negates the works of William Shakespeare and the Brontes as dismissible something along the lines of ‘colossally wasting my time’.


People nuke each other for much more sinister reasons and killing thousand times more, so, I guess that's the difference between Human and Animals)

Well, pesky humans also have this idea of always trying to outdo death. Nature has many ways to cull the population, but humans have found ways to eradicate many of the diseases and plagues that once acted as a population control.
And breed much, much, much too often.


we should argue where we are going to go, is it to doom( the direction we are heading right now), or save our planet, by not wasting too much natural resources.

Hmmm. “optimistic”. You’re young, aintcha?
Keep in mind that Bush now has 2 vacancies on the Supreme Court. You want your future?
“****ed” sums it up pretty well.


If you look back up the list, I've read Charles Darwin, even posted that I wished people would at least have the deacency to quote the man right.

Well, times have changed a bit since Chucky D…a believer in a “creator”, by the by…

And anyone contributing to this thread that _hasn’t_ read some basics on “eolution” should shut the hell up.
This notion that everyone has a “right to an opinion” is really pretty bizarre. And the internet has only added to it.
The only thing anyone has a “right” to is an *informed* opinion.


But I think Mendel's reserch would tend to back up that the more factors that must be met to insure a valid result the higher the odds of acheiving said result.

Mendel’s research also accounts for mutations. Which is a key factor in evolution.
You’re really taking a bunch of isolated scenarios and trying to fit them into the wrong (w)hole.


That's why I'm the "Great Questioner." I question first, believe latter. :) (if at all).

Every time I read your self-proclamation I get the itches. It seems more that you _think_ yourself some ‘great questioner’ until you find a theory (or ‘answer’) that you’re comfortable with.


I think sometimes that people tend to look on only ONE side of the argument...

How can that be when there really _is_ no argument?


and only that which is published...

Yes. I agree.
Burn your bibles now.


Yet there is undenyable a LOT of holes in the theory which can never be patched up by men to make it LOOK credible,

I agree. Kill your priests now!!


If the world did come about as you evolutionists say it did (by a big bang, blah, blah) then obviously the world wouldn't be surviving now....

er, um. Based on what asinine theory?


What blind people are who refuse to believe the truth!

Please! Only so much irony per post!!


The days and the seasons have not changed.

Ah. So because the planet isn’t constantly spinning out of alignment is your answer for gawd. Gotcha.


Believingthe Bible, which has little wording problems

Aside from blatant theft from older material and a _very_ wide array of contradictions? Are you sure you’ve read the sodding thing?


(which can be done away easily enough) you pick out as if it means much.

I’ve always been fond of the scene where a drunk Noah gets porked by his son. Tasty stuff…Ouch!


yet you use a little rag cloth to bind up the forlorn gap

The “Shroud of Turin”?


growing bigger each day, frantically trying to sew it all up before it rips apart...

Yes, cuz the bible gang have such solid facts to create holes in it…yawn.


Come on. This won't do. Reality is cruel if like adilyoussef, you live is a land of illusions amd dreams, untiol you wake up to harsh truth one day, which will then demand of you what good did u do with the truth. Then of course, you can't deny and say you never knew the truth, for I'm telling you the truth NOW....

Fascinating. I’d guess your medication wore off before finishing your post. Thanks for documenting it. Utterly fascinating.

[Pendragon]

Although the idea that we are a failed experiment does come to mind every time I watch the news or see another human being.

Then I sincerely hope you are happy in your lonely little world, if you can't even bear the sight of another human being. I gather, then, that you think yourself the epitome of human elovution, the most brilliant mind ever.


Every time I read your self-proclamation I get the itches. It seems more that you _think_ yourself some ‘great questioner’ until you find a theory (or ‘answer’) that you’re comfortable with.

And you I notice throw snide remarks and downright insults at anyone you disagree with. Touching. I question and manage to remain civil, even when disagreeing. You make no secret that you feel everyone else is a dolt for believing anything less that what you proclaim is the truth. All we have a right to is an *informed* opinion? And, I take it, you will inform us what that opinion is? And excuse me, but we are the ones who are supposed to be crazy? Hum... :lol:

[Pendragon]

extreme),
…and I find the idea of debating someone that subscribes to a “literature” forum but negates the works of William Shakespeare and the Brontes as dismissible something along the lines of ‘colossally wasting my time’.
So I don't like the Brontes' writing and I'm not into Shakespeare. If you disagree with me there, post it on that forum. If you feel you're "colossally wasting" your time debating with me, then don't. You are probably a person who would never step out of the way for a fool. I on the other hand, always do. :) Most civilly yours. Dragon out.

[coffeestained]

Then I sincerely hope you are happy in your lonely little world, if you can't even bear the sight of another human being. I gather, then, that you think yourself the epitome of human elovution, the most brilliant mind ever.

Flip back some: never assume. (tis good advice, even for someone ‘always questioning’)
And don’t paraphrase me.
My words are right there in front of you.
Don’t just read them: comprehend them.
No need to create a little back-story or embellish.


And you I notice throw snide remarks and downright insults at anyone you disagree with. Touching. I question and manage to remain civil, even when disagreeing.

Interesting that someone cracking your ‘debate’ open to show you its hollow interior (as if the exterior wasn’t malnourished enough) is deemed as ‘uncivil’.


All we have a right to is an *informed* opinion?

You honestly think anyone should just blab on about anything they know nothing about? (rhetorical question, simply based on your above ‘observations’).

Conversation is already dying out; let’s not give any wanker with a modem and a keyboard the ‘right’ to step on the ‘soapbox’.
Or to put it in more ‘hip’ terms: if you’re gonna come: come correct.


And, I take it, you will inform us what that opinion is?

I’m not that bold. Nor have the time.
Informed opinions usually ring a bit stronger than the nonsense. Usually.

Don’t get so slighted, I’m not out to get you. “intelligent design” simply has no content. Since there is no content there is no argument.
(I think I’m paraphrasing (or maybe directly quoting) Dr. Daniel Dennett there…)

You kids unearth (pun intended) some, bring it forth.

[sir]

quite fascinating the...evolution of this thread.

best quality coffee spilled everywhere, is spreading a fresh aroma...
I light a cigarette and say: "eppur si muove!"

[Scheherazade]

Religious discussion are always sensitive, causing the most upset. However, it is good to remember that we all come here to exchange ideas as well sharing our views and it is these opinions that we disagree with. Please do not attack personally those who disagree with your views. We cannot expect others to change their beliefs just because we say so.

If you cannot accept this and/or do not want your opinions to be criticised by others, please stay away from these threads.

[Pendragon]

Flip back some: never assume. (tis good advice, even for someone ‘always questioning’)Quite right. I apologize. As Sherlock Holmes always said, "It is a mistake to theorize without all the facts."

Interesting that someone cracking your ‘debate’ open to show you its hollow interior (as if the exterior wasn’t malnourished enough) is deemed as ‘uncivil’.
I’m not out to get you. “intelligent design” simply has no content. Since there is no content there is no argument.
(I think I’m paraphrasing (or maybe directly quoting) Dr. Daniel Dennett there…)

You kids unearth (pun intended) some, bring it forth.Neither am I out to get you. I just don't think you've proved me wrong. Mendel allowed for mutations, yes. A mutation is a variation from the norm, a result other than the one one should expect given a set of circumstances. It just adds another factor into the equation and lengthens the odds of its occurance. That's all I'm trying to say.

[Adelheid]

Pshaw.... since when did Mutation ever mutate something for the better as evolution claims to have done? Also, one cannot 'mutate' so far as to change environment and subtances.... like feathers to scales or vise versa. :brow:

[atiguhya padma]

I doubt very much that evolution claims that mutations mutate for the better. What do you mean by 'better'? It appears to me that mutations persist if they maintain or increase a species fit to its environment.

[coffeestained]

Religious discussion are always sensitive, causing the most upset.

Your sentence is incomplete. Here, I’ll finish it for you…”causing the most upset by those that possibly/potentially question their “beliefs”, many (if not all) times because it is based on little-to-nothing.”

Nothing to get upset about if one has a foundation to base their “opinion” on.


If you cannot accept this and/or do not want your opinions to be criticised by others, please stay away from these threads.

You should really leave this kind of bunk to the moderators.
Everyone’s doing fine here.
Pendragon took a side-swipe and tried to create an image of me, which is fairly typical of someone with no argument and tries to weight the side in their favour - although I have a big feeling you’re addressing your ‘warning’ to me, which is funny, to say the least.

Those that have no thesis will interject with “Pshaw” (for example) from time to time, and while slightly amusing (if not disconcerting), it’s a no blood, no foul arena.


I just don't think you've proved me wrong.

One would have to make a statement based on something to be proved wrong.
You’re linking Mendel’s Law of Independent Assortment [let alone a card deck in a “closed system”] which 1) is only ~150 years old and 2) sorry to say, being shown to have some flaws in certain plant species (I believe it was out of Purdue, I can try to dig up the article if you wish) to an abolishment of evolutionary fact and theory is, as I jested before, trying to hammer the square peg in the round hole.
Far weaker than Behe’s in-depth theory that ‘our blood clots (among other things), so there must be a creator’.
Sorry, "irreducibly complex” (Behe again) doesn’t mean “gawd”.


Pshaw.... since when did Mutation ever mutate something for the better as evolution claims to have done?

Since it’s been “claimed” countless times.
“Better” meaning survival, I’d guess you’re meaning…
Feel free to read up on some.
Co-inkly-dinkly, the book I mentioned before by Stephan Jay Gould, Full House, subtitle “The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin”, (1996) has a chapter, entitled, “Case Two: Life’s Little Joke”, subtitle being, “Genuine changes in central tendency are meaningful, but our failure to consider variation has led to a backwards interpretation: the evolution of horses”.

Kind funny how a book’s chapter title has more words, let alone merit than some posts around here.
Anyway, I am not always in agreement with SJG, but that’s also part of the fun. And needless to say when he counters something I believe (although he was far smarter and experienced than I could ever hope to be) he _does_ come up with something jusssssssssssst a bit more than “pshaw” (for example).
Assuming this book is still in print, I’ll have Amazon send out a few copies to those interested.

[Scheherazade]

You should really leave this kind of bunk to the moderators.
I am the Moderator, Coffeestained. ;) (along with Logos)


Now, once again, please read the Forum Rules (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/announcement.php?f=4) and try to keep your arguments within these, without resorting to personal attacks and disrespecting others in general.

Thank you! ;)

[coffeestained]

I am the Moderator, Coffeestained. ;) (along with Logos)
Now, once again, please read the Forum Rules (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/announcement.php?f=4) and try to keep your arguments within these, without resorting to personal attacks and disrespecting others in general.Thank you! ;)

My apologies.
Usually mods are labeled as such.
My bad.

But I still feel I was not the one crossing any lines…feel free to close my account if you feel I’ve breeched forum contract…

[Pendragon]

If anyone feels that I have personally affronted them in any way, please accept my sincere apologies. But I will still defend my beliefs and statements, for I believe they have merit. Once again, for the record, that is that God created everything. Evolution has taken it from there, each species evolving independtly, no "ape into man" type of thing. I base this on the fact that if man hasn't changed since Eden, then why are there so many diffrent races of man? Thus I believe in both, with limitations. I discount chance as mathmatically unsound. That's all. :cool:

[Loki]

I discount chance as mathmatically unsound.

Pendragon, I wonder if you've heard of the Uncertainty Principle? Read Hawking or Davies and you're bound to come across it. "God" does play dice, after all.

Loki out

[atiguhya padma]

Pendragon,

I presume then that you think that the chances of there being a god are greater than the chances of there not being one? That the chances of there being a god are greater than the chances of there being a purely deductive scientific explanation for the birth of the Universe and the development of life within it?

[coffeestained]

If anyone feels that I have personally affronted them in any way, please accept my sincere apologies.

I hope I made it clear that I didn’t feel that way but I _do_ see the fabrication of a person is far more “personal” than me saying, for example, “generally believing in invisible people and fictional places/things is, under several entries in the DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel for Mental Disorders), not…healthy.”


I base this on the fact that if man hasn't changed since Eden,

Um, what “fact” are you calling upon when your source material is 1) lifted from far older (and better written, more interesting) texts and 2) completely and utterly mythology

You seem to like to question.
Sometimes.
You may actually enjoy reading some religious texts. And here I mean scholarly work, not mythology.


I discount chance as mathmatically unsound. That's all

You base your math games in a closed system.
[looking outside the window, reflectioning on, ohhhhhhhhhh, millions and millions of years of Earth]
Last I heard Earth is pretty gawdamn open.
-For those not grasping this open/closed thing, feel free to glance at a textbook that is probably taught (unless the education system has crumbled far more than I speculate) in 7th grade…

I respect your **NEED**, and that’s all it is (barring any chemical imbalance or misfiring of neurons), to believe in fantasy figures, but please don’t place them out as “fact”.

[Pendragon]

Pendragon, I wonder if you've heard of the Uncertainty Principle? Read Hawking or Davies and you're bound to come across it. "God" does play dice, after all.

Loki out
Yes, I've read Hawking, with intrest. At one point he stated that there was no room for God in the Universe, and in a later work, seemed to modify the statement, allowing for the possibility. A brilliant man. It's sad to see him trapped in his own body by illness.

[Pendragon]

Pendragon,

I presume then that you think that the chances of there being a god are greater than the chances of there not being one? That the chances of there being a god are greater than the chances of there being a purely deductive scientific explanation for the birth of the Universe and the development of life within it?
Why not? It's my choice to make, after all. I find no reason to find fault with those who believe the other way. Infinate universe with infinate possibilities.

[Pendragon]

I respect your **NEED**, and that’s all it is (barring any chemical imbalance or misfiring of neurons), to believe in fantasy figures, but please don’t place them out as “fact”.
Well, you're persistant, anyway. I will answer no more posts from you, as you seem to think me loony anway. No hard feeling, mon ami. Shall we agree to disagree? I shake hands with a worthy opponet, (in spirit, anyway!) Touche! ;)

[coffeestained]

Shall we agree to disagree? I shake hands with a worthy opponet, (in spirit, anyway!) Touche! ;)

heh. As I said, I’m not ‘after you’ nor would my world be affected in any way if you all of a sudden came to your senses, I mean didn’t believe in Elves, Orcs and the Cheshire Cat. (more of a joke than a jab, I just hate smiley-things)

When I said I “respect” your need, it was truthful, not just a setup for a slag or joke. Hell, the world is one miserable, dark place. To me embracing a baseless theory/figure/book as excuse isn’t soothing in the least, to others, many others, it is.
CNN, which seemingly stands for Christian News Network, broadcasts this pap every day.

I will probably hold off on this thread myself, I’m much more interested in talking books, but even that, sadly, isn’t done with much conviction in this Stephen King, Hairy Punter world…

I’ll close, however, by mentioning some books.
I’d hope at either end of the spectrum of thought on this subject one would like to have some knowledge in the area. Be it out of personal curiosity, the desire to learn or even a more spiteful ‘know you’re enemy’.
So, for those that like to read about the potential behind a “creator”, while this is not an area I’m an expert in, I’ve read, and I _believe_ he’s dubbed as the go-to guy on the subject:
Michael J. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box ever-present scientific subtitle is “The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution”
For the opposite side, more of the “evolution” stuff I’d say, Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, the you-know-what-being, “Evolution and the Meanings of Life”.

These are excellent books in the field(s) and both authors have written others, and the astute reader will, from there, be able to also look into other writers in the respective theories from notes, citations and quotes.

Cheers

[Logos]

Not really, as there’s nothing to argue (much like the actually topic of the thread).

I wont bust on your numerous spelling and grammar mistakes in a post trying to cite the brain power of Americans…


Well, I won't cite you on your spelling and grammar either as it would be presumptuous and rude of me :) we are very happy with the fact that there are many people here with english as secondary language who feel welcomed and comfortable enough to participate in these forums. Please try to discuss ideas, not posters.

[coffeestained]

Well, I won't cite you on your spelling and grammar either as it would be presumptuous and rude of me :) we are very happy with the fact that there are many people here with english as secondary language who feel welcomed and comfortable enough to participate in these forums. Please try to discuss ideas, not posters.

Jezuz, it never stops…
If you think I haven’t been pretty damn on-topic most of the time nor can you pick up the irony of defending Americans while butchering the language (which is an idea, and not a person), along with not noticing yourself as *completely* countering your own request with your very post, especially as I just stated, basically, I’ll ‘get out of your hair’, I _highly_ question your “moderating” ability.

My apologies for being off topic here, but then again ignorance *is* a bit of an issue within this thread…

[Logos]

Jezuz, it never stops…
If you think I haven’t been pretty damn on-topic most of the time nor can you pick up the irony of defending Americans while butchering the language (which is an idea, and not a person), along with not noticing yourself as *completely* countering your own request with your very post, especially as I just stated, basically, I’ll ‘get out of your hair’, I _highly_ question your “moderating” ability.

My apologies for being off topic here, but then again ignorance *is* a bit of an issue within this thread…

And my apologies for not seeing your post above mine as I was in the process of typing mine when you posted yours.

But yes I can point out when someone is out of line with their comments about anothers' grammar and spelling, it's my job here. It is rude and presumptious to make it an issue. A person may have dyslexia, be using vision-impaired software or have english as secondary language and again, we try to have these forums welcoming to all, of all ages.

Please no more discussion of moderating in topic. If you or anyone ever has an issue or questions with/about the Moderators you can take it up with said Moderator or Admin via PM. We're just trying to maintain an atmosphere of civil, respectful discussion. This is the longest (36 pages) topic in this forum yet and I'm very happy it's mostly been postive and constructive.

[coffeestained]

And my apologies for not seeing your post above mine as I was in the process of typing mine when you posted yours.

As I’ve said in the past: no blood, no foul.


But yes I can point out when someone is out of line with their comments about anothers' grammar and spelling, it's my job here. It is rude and presumptious to make it an issue. A person may have dyslexia, be using vision-impaired software or have english as secondary language and again, we try to have these forums welcoming to all, of all ages.

If anything, *you’ve* made it an issue. Adults can generally take care of themselves, and can see the coloured lights (i.e. debating/moderating device).
The day after my jibe I believe I stated I meant it as no harm and that I was using it in a situation by mentioned that I fully understood the first W in www was for world.
And I don’t think I outright offended anyone as clearly many haven’t felt the need to re-read their own posts or run them through a spell-checker before hitting “post”.
And keep on top on all this I have never stated on a numerical value where English is on my CV; I never will state I am perfect in any way. I do, however, during the course of my work day (as most of us are probably doing, much to our employer’s chagrin) try to make my posts pretty readable.
Occasionally, as we all do, I make a flub.


Please no more discussion of moderating in topic. If you or anyone ever has an issue or questions with/about the Moderators you can take it up with said Moderator or Admin via PM.

Much like your original post should have been handled?

[and sorry for keeping at this but I find it intolerable that you try to unjustly (for I’d guess that Edmond made no formal complaint and this all happened days before and was pretty much rendered moot) paddle my bottom in public…]

Back spot-on topic: here’s a bizarre article that takes “evolution” to silly levels. “Evolutionary Psychology”…

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-envtpsych29aug29,0,4091107.story?coll=la-home-health

[Scheherazade]

Please no more discussion of moderating in topic. If you or anyone ever has an issue or questions with/about the Moderators you can take it up with said Moderator or Admin via PM.Much like your original post should have been handled? You have been PMed, Coffeestained; however, since you have not yet read your PM, we had to bring this matter here.

[coffeestained]

You have been PMed, Coffeestained; however, since you have not yet read your PM, we had to bring this matter here.

Hmmm, indeed. I guess I don’t get email alert or a pop-up that there is a new message.
Although the message is bull****, as CLEARLY argued (although there *is* no argument) within this thread.

Forget it kids, do me a favour and delete my account or render it to “guest”. Pretty please. With metaphorical sugar on top.

[Logos]

Forget it kids, do me a favour and delete my account or render it to “guest”. Pretty please. With metaphorical sugar on top.

If you want your account deleted, you have to PM Admin (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/member.php?u=3) about it.

[Pendragon]

Hello to evryone still interested in this thread. I've learned a lot here, and I kind of hate to see this thread die. Here is what I learned from talking with all of you, and remember, this is only my opinion.
1.) Question everything until you find something you are comfortable with believing.
2.) Once you do this, to quote the Eagles "You better hang on tooth and nail, the wolf is always at the door."
3.) You should consider yourself under no obligation to explain to anyone why you believe what you believe.
4.) If you do try to explain yourself remember this:
a.) There is no proof that will not be called into question by someone
b.) There is no point without a counterpoint
c.) This debate is older than any of us, and will likely survive us all
d.) It is better to agree to disagee and remain friends than agrue pointlessly over what none of us are willing to change, and indeed, should not change, our own convictions. For if we are truly convinced, then we should stand on that, and respect the other's right to do the same.

I wish all of you happiness in all that you do. As Paul says in the Bible, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherein Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Galatians 5:1 Being free to belive what you will, then exercise your freedom, as I will mine. But as I said, I'd hate to see this thread close. It's been so interesting...ya know? :)

[atiguhya padma]

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherein Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

Unless that bondage is Christianity itself, I take it.

<3.) You should consider yourself under no obligation to explain to anyone why you believe what you believe.>

No doubt this kind of principle was a contributing factor to the Jonestown Massacre.

Let me give some principles:

1) Question everything, especially those things you feel most comfortable in believing.
2) If you enter a debate with a belief, you should always feel obliged to give an explanation for your belief, otherwise you are little more than a propagandist.
3) If you are unwilling to change a belief, no matter what, then at least recognise that you have an extreme bias.
4) Never be truly convinced of something, unless you can logically defend your belief. The only open minded question, should be the one that has yet to be logically answered.

[Pendragon]

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherein Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

Unless that bondage is Christianity itself, I take it.Please do not put words into my mouth.


<3.) You should consider yourself under no obligation to explain to anyone why you believe what you believe.>

No doubt this kind of principle was a contributing factor to the Jonestown Massacre.The Jonestown Massacre was a shameful and shocking example of what happens when people follow a man who advises them to seperate themselves from society and form their own "utopia." It almost always ends badly, like out in Waco, under similiar circumstances. As to whether my principle 3 would be a factor, I would say isolation and a messiah complex had more to do with it.


Let me give some principles:

1) Question everything, especially those things you feel most comfortable in believing.
2) If you enter a debate with a belief, you should always feel obliged to give an explanation for your belief, otherwise you are little more than a propagandist.
3) If you are unwilling to change a belief, no matter what, then at least recognise that you have an extreme bias.
4) Never be truly convinced of something, unless you can logically defend your belief. The only open minded question, should be the one that has yet to be logically answered.I really don't feel that it is propaganda to state what you believe, nor that refusal to change is a show of bias. One thing for certain, there is no proof that will not be questioned by someone, or called "illogical" by someone. Don't take this as a personal attack, for that is not my intention. I will agree to disagree, shake hands, and move on with no hard feelings. We're all adults here, correct? So my best to you, hold on to your beliefs tightly, for who knows but what in the end you may be correct and myself wrong. Cheers! Dragon out. ;)

[Loki]

We're all adults here, correct?

Yes. That's if you count teenagers as adults....:brow:


Yes, I've read Hawking, with intrest. At one point he stated that there was no room for God in the Universe, and in a later work, seemed to modify the statement, allowing for the possibility.

Ah, yes, *everything* is possible, remember. But it is highly improbable that the Christian god in particular should be true. Maybe some god, who started off the Big Bang and then decided to disappear...but that still doesn't solve the problem, I mean, where did the god come from? If you say "he has always existed" well then it's the same as the universe, the universe has also existed for as long as there has been time.

I'm glad you enjoy Hawking. Have you read his The Universe in a Nutshell? Wonderful book, with very interesting concepts.

What boggles me is, if you have read Hawking, surely you must have come across the Uncertainty Principle...*somewhere*? Or have you perhaps read a more specialised work that didn't go into detail about this? Or were you merely joking when you said that there is no room for chance in this universe...

No time. Must run.

Loki

[Pendragon]

Yes. That's if you count teenagers as adults....:brow:
Sure. Who am I to argue with our court system, that consistantly tries them as adults? :brow:

I'm glad you enjoy Hawking. Have you read his The Universe in a Nutshell? Wonderful book, with very interesting concepts.

What boggles me is, if you have read Hawking, surely you must have come across the Uncertainty Principle...*somewhere*? Or have you perhaps read a more specialised work that didn't go into detail about this? Or were you merely joking when you said that there is no room for chance in this universe...

No time. Must run.

LokiIt was a condensed version of The Universe in a Nutshell that I read first, then an article he wrote for Science Digest. What I meant was that chance is not the answer to evolution. If I remember correctly, there are two more schools of thought on evolution other than mere chance. As I said, although I still see no reason to have to defend the statement, I believe God created the earth and everything in it. Then due to the cataclyclisms and things (such as the breaking up of the supercontinent), man and the animals have been forced to adapt to different environments, and so have evolved into what they are today. I was interested to read only yesterday that science now believes that neantherthals and homo sapiens existed at the same time but homo sapiens erradicated them. Can't they ever make up their minds?

[Logos]

We're all adults here, correct?


Actually.. this site has members of all ages, over 13 years of age and younger ;) a big reason why we try to keep things as civil as possible regarding swearing and flaming/trolling etc.

[Tuana]

I said Evolution. Because I prefer evolution rather than saying "God created Adam and Eve"

Best Regards...

[atiguhya padma]

<Can't they ever make up their minds?>

Fortunately for us, most of the scientific community are always revising their work, open to new interpretations, etc. Unlike the religious communities whose minds were made up for them 2000/1500/2500/4000+ yrs ago.

[dejosc]

yeh i agree with her the thing is no they dont ever make up their minds because theyre always changing unlike your views no matter what peole say

[Pendragon]

Fortunately for us, most of the scientific community are always revising their work, open to new interpretations, etc. Unlike the religious communities whose minds were made up for them 2000/1500/2500/4000+ yrs ago.You're assuming again, that every religious person has no mind of their own. If this were true, I would not believe in evolution in any form, but I do, just not mere chance. Cheers! :)

[Stanislaw]

Well technically Darwin never stated that he disagreed with a creationist theory, all he said that life was breathed into this matter (paraphrased). So implying a God does exist. AND Genisis does state that God breathed life into man (the breath of life/God into adam. (again paraphrased).
And theoretically Genisis does mirrior the evolutionary stages in the evolution theory. So one is not concrete disproof of the other, however they do coincide. Perhaps Genisis is a metaphor fro creation, putting the concept into simpler terms so that early people could have some grasp of their origins, not to mention the Bible has been translated multiple times, aswell as revised multiple times. So it is possible that our present bible is slightly muddled.

That is why one should prey for disernment before reading the Bible, also another factor is personal interpretation. after all "everything is truee, from a certain point of view"

btw. nice darwin pic! :thumbs_up :D

God isn't a monkey. neither is he like any other creatures his created. Man made him to be so. The Bible says He is a Spirit, the Great I AM.

Read this passage, you'll know what I mean:


God is a spirit:


And I don't think I've ever seen anyone look like this before: (see 1st attachment)

And I can imagine that Darwin would change his theory once he saw this: :lol: (see 2nd attachment)

[Pendragon]

There used to be a famous scientific system for the identification of criminals called "The Bertillon System." Bertillion based his system on sound fact--probability mathematics. He postulated that if you took one measurement of a man, his exact height, the possibility of duplication was 1 in 4. But add in another measurement, the circumference of the head, and the odds increase to 16 to 1. His system used 14 measurements, and had odds of 286,435,456 to 1 odds of a duplication. Yet it failed in 1903 when a convict named Will West was being processed for entry into Leavenworth. According to his measurements, he was already behind bars in the prison. When the officals checked, their Will West was in his cell. The two might have been twins. Indeed, it turned out that they were. But their fingerprints were different. This really doesn't bear much on our discussion, but it does demonstrate (hopefully) the point I was trying to make about how the more factors that must come true to make chance come out right, the greater the odds of it ever occuring. But it can, I will concede that. It can, indeed.

[rebekah]

I don't think it's right to say that Religion and Science are opposed, in fact I believe that they complement each other. I can't remember who said this, but he was a scientist and a Christian, and he said that 'we once believed that God was so great that he created the world, now we believe he is even greater than that; he created a world that could create itself'.

[Satirical]

Centuries ago, I recall reading somewhere, the effects of theology on the comings of science. How the belief in possesion weighed heavily on the minds of the community when anything out of the ordinary happened. Epilepsy, I think, was caused by demonic possesion for your sins. Hammubari's codes were designed so that a woman may be divorced if she was "possesed" because she had sinned. See the process of blaming the victim here?

[Satirical]

The contrast here was the scientific community who considered these afflictions of the body. Tell me again that religion and science complement each other. No more than we need a good story.

[atiguhya padma]

<'we once believed that God was so great that he created the world, now we believe he is even greater than that; he created a world that could create itself'.>

That's merely a belief. There is nothing scientific about that statement. If a world could create itself, who needs God?

[Adelheid]

<'we once believed that God was so great that he created the world, now we believe he is even greater than that; he created a world that could create itself'.>

That's merely a belief. There is nothing scientific about that statement. If a world could create itself, who needs God?

Ah... the real wonder though is that God CREATED the world (meaning making something out of nothing- where one could make something out of something but not anything out of nothing) in such a way that it could take care of itself. (reproduction, decomposition, sanitation, etc.) See how even He created instinct in animals, which men marvel at, but refuse to acknowledge the Maker or it all! The Irony!

If I admired an invention of a scientist, could I then say, " Oh! I've never heard of such a scientist before, therefore He couldn't have made this splendid invention" Neither could I claim, "This scientist couldn't have done it" or say, "If you say that the scientist did really make it, then prove it to me. Let me see him at work with it myself." I could also choose to find fault with the machine and say "oh look! there is a fault of operation here... it's all wrong. the manual's wrong. this scientist is a liar!"

How could I presume to say that I, ME and MYSELF should get the honour of watching the scientist at work? How could I claim that since I've never come across of such a scientist before, that one doesn't exist? It is MY fault that I didn't know him before and not the scientist's! Yet all in all, the invention is still there for itself to prove in reality that it was made by the unknown scientist, (whether I choose to believe it or not) and that the scientist really does exist!

You see, it is the same with mankind today and God, He is the Scientist who created the universe out of nothing. He was the scientist's whose invention has lasted thousands of years old, millions of days old. He was the One who caused His work to reproduce after it's own kind and dispose after itself. He is the I AM who made the beauty of the looming majestic mountains that we so admire, and the fragile breath of the lily. It was Himself, indeed who gave us ungrateful wretches life and breath.

Yet after all this, mankind starts to say, "where is such a God, the scientist?" I have never heard of Him, myself! I have never seen Him. He doesn't exist!" They start to say "I've found a fault in the manual- God's Word. He's a liar!" Man has started to doubt the Creator and His Word, even while the creation is still before them! They've put holes in the testimony of the creation where none was before, and spread lies to everyone around... lies that in this world could have been sued after.....

The creation of the Maker is BEFORE your very eyes, oh blinded people! Tear off the prejudice, cast the lies away and see and hear for yourself the fresh Truth! God is the only God, The Great I AM who made the world Himself. He is the scientist who you so scornfully reject and despise. Look on the world and see for yourself!!

[Scheherazade]

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/umedia/20050921/cp.2c73ac39f31d2131586275fba148c5ba


http://news.yahoo.com/comics/frankandernest;_ylt=ArDjNalSR5CNhqGZoPM4lykE_b4F;_ ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[Loki]

You see, it is the same with mankind today and God, He is the Scientist who created the universe out of nothing.

But weren't the Ancient Egyptian gods (Atum/Ra in particular), the Norse gods (Odin and his brothers), the Greek gods (especially Prometheus and Epimetheus) P'an-ku (whose fleas became mankind after he died for the world), Kamui, Izanami and Izanagi (the latter couple created the Japanese islands, the first was the divine creator), the Aboriginal ancestors who woke and created themselves out of nothing (especially Ungambikula) and then carved people from the earth, and every other creation god, also scientists? Wasn't even the cow who "un-iced" (licked the primeval ice until he came out) Odin and the first Norse gods also, in a sense, scientists?


He was the scientist's whose invention has lasted thousands of years old, millions of days old.

Um, just curious, but do you mean to say that you think this (sorry if a teeny bit large) is "incorrect"?

http://www.paleoweb.net/pal-ges/bilder/evolution-poster.jpg


As I said just curious. And what do you make of million-year-old fossils? Hmm, what about the Stone Age people? From what I remember, humans have only been on earth for three minutes in a 24-hr day (appearing three minutes before midnight)...

Interesting subject,

Loki

[B-Mental]

Hey Loki, I am a geologist, and I totally concur with your diagram. The interesting thing is the abundant life that we as humans consider lesser forms (about 95% of your diagram). The evidence of evolution is just overwhelming. Creation is a rationalism of earlier times. When the Book of Genesis was written 7000 years represented an almost inconceivable amount of time.

[Pendragon]

I'll say one thing, Loki, mon ami. I am told that to belive that God created everything takes a lot of faith. Perhaps this is so. But for me, to believe in the events recorded on your very carefully drawn out chart takes even more faith... :nod:

[subterranean]

I once read that it's "easier" to believe that a creator exist and created the whole universe, than to believe the whole process of evolution...



I'll say one thing, Loki, mon ami. I am told that to belive that God created everything takes a lot of faith. Perhaps this is so. But for me, to believe in the events recorded on your very carefully drawn out chart takes even more faith... :nod:

[Stanislaw]

Well, logically everything must have a beggining, and the best explenation is a divine being. something must have started it all.

[Adelheid]

Loki, How do you know that that chart is true? Evolution is not even a law. It's a theory. I'm even inclined to say it's only a hypothesis, not all of nature agrees with the facts that Evolution claims.

[pea]

ISo it's not that I "Don't know what to think" as the poll suggests, but that I merely havn't decided yet. In anycase I don't believe in biblical creation, but evolution in the sense that we went from fish to lizards to ... etc... until we became humans (I apologize for my increadibly ignorant and superficial analysis of evolution ;)) still seems a bit suspicious to me. perhaps in a couple years when I'm a bit more stable in my beliefs I'll dig this thread up and post a reply.

i also vote for"Don't know what to think", and my reason is just the same as yours: "havn't decided yet"
my entire knowledge of biology is based on evolution, that's what i was taught to accept. i just took it for granted until i entered college and took a course called western culture. i was extremely interested in the whole "vs" thing and devoured five books on this topic. they shaked my strong hold in evolution, but the whole"God created everyting" concept still seems a bit suspicious to me. so i ended up having no idea which theory to take.
and i also think that creation and evolution are not in sharp contrast.

[Stanislaw]

i also vote for"Don't know what to think", and my reason is just the same as yours: "havn't decided yet"
my entire knowledge of biology is based on evolution, that's what i was taught to accept. i just took it for granted until i entered college and took a course called western culture. i was extremely interested in the whole "vs" thing and devoured five books on this topic. they shaked my strong hold in evolution, but the whole"God created everyting" concept still seems a bit suspicious to me. so i ended up having no idea which theory to take.
and i also think that creation and evolution are not in sharp contrast.

well, everything needs a beggining right, so what else could have started it all except for God?

[B-Mental]

well, everything needs a beggining right, so what else could have started it all except for God?


I am not questioning whether or not God created it, but I believe in evolution. The question is 'was everything (including humanity) created by the Almighty in seven days, or did the species Homo sapiens sapiens evolve from slight mutations?'

[B-Mental]

Loki, How do you know that that chart is true? Evolution is not even a law. It's a theory. I'm even inclined to say it's only a hypothesis, not all of nature agrees with the facts that Evolution claims.


Please grant me a couple of these mysterious portions of nature. Better yet offer me one piece of evidence for creation. Just one, without any holes, can you?

[SaintGermain]

Well God created the earth and everything on it but used evolution as the way of creating new species....

thats what i believe

[okmit]

Hey Loki, I am a geologist, and I totally concur with your diagram. The interesting thing is the abundant life that we as humans consider lesser forms (about 95% of your diagram). The evidence of evolution is just overwhelming. Creation is a rationalism of earlier times. When the Book of Genesis was written 7000 years represented an almost inconceivable amount of time.

I think the reason people(humans) consider themselves superior in nature to all other species is because of their superior ability to reason which is considered as a Divine gift by some.
On their considering 7000 years representing an almost inconcievable amount of time I must agree,it is.Which is a minute number compared to the number of coincidences required in the evolution theory.

Wasn't it Socrates that was wise because he knew he didn't know...Hmm?

[Stanislaw]

I am not questioning whether or not God created it, but I believe in evolution. The question is 'was everything (including humanity) created by the Almighty in seven days, or did the species Homo Sapiens sapiens evolve from slight mutations?'

well if you follow thge steps of creation, they do follow the same steps as evolution. Maybe Genesis is a metaphor/parrable explaining evolution as it would be explained to someone who could grasp this concept...ie, early man.

[B-Mental]

I have noticed some similarities, and they tend to follow similar successions. I totally agree. I guess I just wonder what it is that creationists accept. Is there a fear in evolving? Do they accept some science and not others? How do they justify using science based technology, and then cast doubt on certain fields? Fields with vast volumes supporting evidence of evolution.

[Stanislaw]

I have noticed some similarities, and they tend to follow similar successions. I totally agree. I guess I just wonder what it is that creationists accept. Is there a fear in evolving? Do they accept some science and not others? How do they justify using science based technology, and then cast doubt on certain fields? Fields with vast volumes supporting evidence of evolution.

well, it all depends on the group eh. Well, some people are very stuborn, or are stuck on a superiority complex, me I am always open to something new...unless it is completely stupid. ;)

[B-Mental]

touche pronounced "two-shay"

[Pendragon]

I am not questioning whether or not God created it, but I believe in evolution. The question is 'was everything (including humanity) created by the Almighty in seven days, or did the species Homo sapiens sapiens evolve from slight mutations?'I have said all along that God created everthing, but evolution shaped it into what it is today. Now tell me, B-Mental, kind sir, why that makes me wrong? I do not understand nor see the significance of such charts as posted by Loki, to me that takes a great deal of acceptence on faith alone. I can go get fresh fossil seacreatures from a mountain side not too far from here, where the AT crosses. I've found some very neat ones. But I cannot accept everything evolving from one cell or whatever. Each evolved from the creature God made into the creature they are now. That is how I believe evolution. Was I a rabid, dyed in the wool creationist, I couldn't even accept that. But I can think. We are not all one race, we have evolved and changed, so it stands to reason the animals and plant life have done the same. And I believe the process still continues... How about that? It goes on unstopable every day, changing just a bit. Thank you for your time. God bless.

[querida]

If Darwinian evolution is true, then God has nothing to do with the origin of life. Some Christian say that God could have used evolution to bring about life. This is called theistic evolution.
Theistic evolutionists believe that God "created the first spark of life then directed his creation through the vehicle of gradual evolution". How can that coincide with Christian beliefs (God is love,...) if evolutionists refer to the process of evolution as cruel and wasteful (elimination of weakest species,...)?

The roots of modern science are grounded in a Christian view of the world. This is not surprising, since science is based on the assuption that the universe is orderly and lawful; which would seem to be the effect of an intelligent Cause.
One cannot say that the biblical worldview of early modern scientists doesn't apply anymore, and that now "science" has demonstrated that life could evolve on its own. There is evidence of design, and hence a designer. Science today cannot prove the opposite.

And who says that evolution is objectively scientifically proven?
Evolution has 2 main ideas :
1. Spontaneous generation. "Life started in awarm pond"
Researchers have attempted to prove that life could have simply happened. Origin-of-life experiments (the "re-enactments" of how life came to be) have 11 major problems, one of them alone would stop the progress from non-living molecules to living cells.
Evolution says : life comes from non-life
Science says : life comes from life
Professor Dean Kenyon, a biochemist and former chemical evolutionist, now writes, "When all relevant lines are taken into account, and all the problems squarely faced, I think we must conclude that life owes its inception to a source outside nature."
2. Natural selection. Darwin made a trip to the Galapagos Islands and dicovered birds whose beak sizes we a little different. He thought he had sicovered evolution in action. Evolution assumes that all of the diversity of life came from simpler, less complex forms of life. For this to work though, new complex structures must emerge. For evolution to occur, you have to "add new stuff". What Darwin called "natural selection" was actually "adaptation".
So what you could call "microevolution" is true and proven: species can change slightly to adapt to their invoronments (it's true with humans too, compare the body of an eskimo to that of an african bushman). But these small adaptive changes have never been observed to lead to whole new structures (=Darwinian evolution).
Edward Deevey Jr. wrote "Some remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selectiong inside the speecies, or within a larger circle of closely related species, such a the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens can mke cylindical eggs."

Wow.... I didn't mean for this to be so long.... just wanted to open some eyes to the lacking scientific data on evolution.
I think the reason evolution has lasted so long is that no one has found a better argument against what the Bible says to be true; and milions of people have whole careers based on the "facts of evolution".
Check out this article (http://www.leaderu.com/science/pbs_evolution.html) analysing a documentary on evolution for more indept stuff.

For those of you who have stuck with me this long, thank you... don't know if I would have!

Good day.

"Every advance in fundamental physics seems to uncover yet another facet of order" (so says non-christian physicist Paul Davies). But stirct evolution demands chance rather than a Law-Maker as the guiding force........ hmmmm.

[BigDaddy_GFS]

The two theories are not completely exclusive. Beleif in evolution or the Big Bang should not necessarily mean that there is no higher power.
Belief in God, likewise, should not rule out scientific discoveries and theories.
It bugs me that rational people can't see that. It's not an either/or proposition.

[Pendragon]

The roots of modern science are grounded in a Christian view of the world. This is not surprising, since science is based on the assuption that the universe is orderly and lawful; which would seem to be the effect of an intelligent Cause.
One cannot say that the biblical worldview of early modern scientists doesn't apply anymore, and that now "science" has demonstrated that life could evolve on its own. There is evidence of design, and hence a designer. Science today cannot prove the opposite.

And who says that evolution is objectively scientifically proven?
Evolution has 2 main ideas :
1. Spontaneous generation. "Life started in awarm pond"
Researchers have attempted to prove that life could have simply happened. Origin-of-life experiments (the "re-enactments" of how life came to be) have 11 major problems, one of them alone would stop the progress from non-living molecules to living cells.
Evolution says : life comes from non-life
Science says : life comes from life
Professor Dean Kenyon, a biochemist and former chemical evolutionist, now writes, "When all relevant lines are taken into account, and all the problems squarely faced, I think we must conclude that life owes its inception to a source outside nature."
2. Natural selection. Darwin made a trip to the Galapagos Islands and dicovered birds whose beak sizes we a little different. He thought he had sicovered evolution in action. Evolution assumes that all of the diversity of life came from simpler, less complex forms of life. For this to work though, new complex structures must emerge. For evolution to occur, you have to "add new stuff". What Darwin called "natural selection" was actually "adaptation".
So what you could call "microevolution" is true and proven: species can change slightly to adapt to their invoronments (it's true with humans too, compare the body of an eskimo to that of an african bushman). But these small adaptive changes have never been observed to lead to whole new structures (=Darwinian evolution).
Edward Deevey Jr. wrote "Some remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selectiong inside the speecies, or within a larger circle of closely related species, such a the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens can mke cylindical eggs."
My thanks for stating scientifically what I in my fumbling way, (if you look back over my posts, you'll see it!) have been trying to say. No species change, change within the species in order to adapt to the changing world around us. God bless.

[B-Mental]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[querida]

Phylogeny & Ontogeny?

Would you care you elaborate, B-Mental?

[B-Mental]

I'll try... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[okmit]

I'll try... during the course of embryo development, the embryo shows similarities to other species we "possibly" evolved from. This is most notably witnessed in the development of the nervous system. Perhaps I'll be able to find some demonstrations on the internet. In a nutshell, we share embryonic stages with other species, which evolutionists use to suggest our evolutionary ancestry.

I too have noted some strange similarities with other species.One head,two eyes,two ears,and one nose!...Hmm.,possibly we evolved from them!?

[B-Mental]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[MrBojangles]

The two theories are not completely exclusive. Beleif in evolution or the Big Bang should not necessarily mean that there is no higher power.
Belief in God, likewise, should not rule out scientific discoveries and theories.
It bugs me that rational people can't see that. It's not an either/or proposition.

When has a religious fanatic been rationally able to understand that??

[B-Mental]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[okmit]

Bilateral symmetry, wow you're very observant, your wit is actually the truth. I'm talking about a presence of a notochord in embryos. Prior to lung development embryos show a proto-gill, I'll find some more examples.

In general, the embryos do not display certain attributes of lets say starfish, so we can rule out starfish as your predecessor if that makes you feel better. Did you notice a head, reffered to as encephalization. Animals that don't have heads are generally believed to have ancestors that evolved prior to cephalization. Keep up the good work okmit, you might stumble across something else.

Thank you,I do believe I just may have stumbled across another observation at that!In every attempt to explain how the cake in the oven came out a pie the proof offered always consists of the hard facts of ,generaly BELIEVED,similarities suggest,it appears possible,etc.But the missing link is still missing!Unless one believes the link is an omnipotant creator.In which case one needn't consider how a komodo dragon may have evolved from a crockodile,or a human from a star fish,or ape.

[B-Mental]

as per PMxxxxxxxxx

[okmit]

I've ruled out starfish for you, but feel free to keep looking. I'm going to stay off of this thread, I've decided I've been convinced and am now a die-hard cretonationist. I can now go about my life with my head held high. Thank you all for your comments.

Hmm...Creationist vs Idiots?A challenge to the mentally deficient?

I thank you for ruling out star fish for my benifit but it really isn't my quest to establish a missing link.But I would caution any geologist to go through life with their head held high...Hmm.

B-Mental,till our paths cross again,B-Cool

[Stanislaw]

well, you can't go callign evolutionists (???) idiots. It's bad arguing...called poisoning yonder well.

[okmit]

well, you can't go callign evolutionists (???) idiots. It's bad arguing...called poisoning yonder well.

And down right rude I might add.

[mono]

I too have noted some strange similarities with other species.One head,two eyes,two ears,and one nose!...Hmm.,possibly we evolved from them!?
While trying to remain relatively unbiased to a humane limit, I think it essential to note that the human embryo first begins, particularly in the first trimester and early second trimester, with a tail-like appearance from what form as later the lumbar region, sacrum, and coccyx. Of course its development relies much on intake of folic acid, the spine and tail-like appearance elongate in slower proportions to the rest of the fetal figure in late second trimester and third trimester, reducing the tail.
Not that I meant to correct you, okmit, I think this a very important similarity that, perhaps, B-Mental aimed.

[Stanislaw]

well, there is only so many ways a ball of cells can be thrown together, we are all organisms shaped by earth, so why not share similr characteristics (fro ye evolusionists out there)

and well, there is only so many ways a ball of cells can be thrown together... ever paint a fence, the procedure is pretty much the same, just the fini9shed product is different. (for all you creationists out there)

[Adelheid]

There is no link between the 'apeman' and the humans we see today.

Even scientists who expouse evolution say so. The Homo Erectus and upward are (what scientists all agree) true humans, there has not been found a link for apeman. Both creationists and evolutionist believes that the 'ape man' was either an extinct ape or extinct human.

[Pendragon]

In the intrests of peace on this thread, I would like to point out that calling each other "religious fanatics", "scientific fanatics", and "idiots" is doing nothing to further either cause. The question is which belief does one choose to go with, and can they validate that belief in any way. What we have here is two groups of people who absolutely refuse to listen to anything the other has to say. It is not a discussion if you only choose to hear your own side, and your own view, and dismiss everything else without even thinking about it. I personally feel God created the world, but evolution (adaptation) has changed and shaped it. Does that me I must force everyone else to see it my way? No. Can I learn from an opposing view? Likely. Can they learn from me? If they are open-minded, likely. But fussing and fighting and name calling is getting us nowhere! http://www.websmileys.com/sm/sad/533.gif

[okmit]

While trying to remain relatively unbiased to a humane limit, I think it essential to note that the human embryo first begins, particularly in the first trimester and early second trimester, with a tail-like appearance from what form as later the lumbar region, sacrum, and coccyx. Of course its development relies much on intake of folic acid, the spine and tail-like appearance elongate in slower proportions to the rest of the fetal figure in late second trimester and third trimester, reducing the tail.
Not that I meant to correct you, okmit, I think this a very important similarity that, perhaps, B-Mental aimed.

Thank you,but I am aware of the coccyx .However,I have a close friend that was born with webed toes an fingers but can not conclude it is because she evolved from a Duck or frog...Hmm?Platypus perhaps...just kidding Carol.

[Chava]

In the intrests of peace on this thread, I would like to point out that calling each other "religious fanatics", "scientific fanatics", and "idiots" is doing nothing to further either cause. The question is which belief does one choose to go with, and can they validate that belief in any way. What we have here is two groups of people who absolutely refuse to listen to anything the other has to say. It is not a discussion if you only choose to hear your own side, and your own view, and dismiss everything else without even thinking about it. I personally feel God created the world, but evolution (adaptation) has changed and shaped it. Does that me I must force everyone else to see it my way? No. Can I learn from an opposing view? Likely. Can they learn from me? If they are open-minded, likely. But fussing and fighting and name calling is getting us nowhere!

I think one of the most challenging things about discussing religion is the mutual understanding. The other day, a favourite debator was rounding the corner, (at my school mind you) and her being in deep argument with another bloke, i thought i would join in the fun. However, that was to be a thouroughly mind wrenching experience. I'm used to people disagreeing with me, but i've never felt, hated. At this point, this girl rounds on me, and all of a suden, i feel as if the whole last year in which myself and another mate have discussed religion with her, us being atheists, and her being a muslim, has been misguided and perhaps cruel. Naturally, and shortsightedly, my mate and me have always presumed ourselves to be right, but i was of the opinion, that I had a completely credible understanding when it came to religion. Respecting the individuals right to choose a religion, but always pointing out that i found religion ridiculous, and blindfolding to it's people, if not downright illogical.
Now, the point is, this girl gives me hell... All of a sudden, i'm confronted with everything I didn't realise i was doing, like the arrogant smirk i put on when discussing, and my lack of respect for her (which i disagree with, it's got nothing to do with religion mind you) and so forth. Apart from being shocked beyond words, and after having sincerely appologised for my previous behaviour, and then crawling under a rock to hide for all eternity, i have learned that regardless of good intentions, and the belief that one is clear with respect, how awfull to acknowledge, that perhaps, after all, one wasn't as open minded as one had always assumed... and boy... does it hurt to have that smacked in your face!

[Chava]

Brave New World

[Pendragon]

I'm used to people disagreeing with me, but i've never felt, hated.


i have learned that regardless of good intentions, and the belief that one is clear with respect, how awfull to acknowledge, that perhaps, after all, one wasn't as open minded as one had always assumed... and boy... does it hurt to have that smacked in your face!
Hi Chava. You shouldn't have to feel hated for how you believe. If I'm talking about Jesus over here and then hating you the next second that doesn't scan in my Bible. We may disagree perhaps, but you can ask the other atheists on the forum if Pendragon ever posts any type of hate letters. Doesn't happen. I've had to swallow my own medicine before, when a lady pointed out that I was acting inappropiately and I was forced to go to someone, tell them what I had done (which was to mimic them behind their back) and apologize. That was probably the hardest thing I ever did in my life, but it was the right thing to do. Anytime you feel like a discussion, drop me a PM or a post. Take care now. Dragon out. :)

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

If I may say so, the problem isnt neccessarily "Evolution vs. Creationism," but its a small fringe thats growing wider, unfortunately, by certain individuals that can't understand that religion isn't science. The problem is, that certain devoutly religious individuals in politics or otherwise, are trying to find scientific validity for their unscientific beliefs, and when science, complying with the rules of science, prove them wrong, they then feel the need to "cheat" and appeal to the government that they have been ousted. I think of it like two children are arguing, one gets hurt because the other won a fight by fair means, so he cries to his mother to be proven right.

You want to believe that God created the Earth in 7 24-hour days? Fine. But let science alone.

[querida]

I think the whole 7 24-hour days thing has been very confusing for many people.
I personally believe that God created the universe through longer periods of time, that 7 days is a way of putting it... the Bible is full of such imagery, metaphors and such things. Many Christians have acknowledge that.

I'm afraid I don't really understand what you mean, misanthrope. In my opinion, if anyone, atheists have appealed to the govornment: I'll use the example of the united states constitution. Did you know that whole parts of it have been cut out of it in most textbooks used in public schools?

I personally don't see a distinction between what I believe (the Bible) and what is scientifically proven today. Any attempts at "finding the truth" (contradicting the Bible) has only led to solidifying and re-confirming what was written up to 3450 years ago.

Prof. Henry Margeneau (taught physics at Yale for over 40 years, worked with A. Einstein) said: "If you ask scientists who have a mild training in science... you do get the impressiong that there is a conflict between science and religion. But if you ask really good scientists... leading scientists, the people who have made contributions which have made science grow so vastly in the last fifty years, these sientists are all religions in their beliefs."

After looking into evolution more indepth, this is what I see: The belief that God created all things requires faith. But the evolutionary theory requires more faith, since evolution runs contrary to reason, science and history... think about it....

As always, this is my personal opinion.
That's all from me today.

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

I dont neccessarily mean the federal gov't, but local school boards in Pennsylvania and a lot of the Southern states have had appeals to school boards by religious parents trying to "control" the teaching of evolution. The Christian fringe has, numerous times, tried to stop the acceptance of Evolution because they, quite honestly, have their heads buried deepest in the sand are quite uncapable of thinking in reasonable terms. They see scientific thought as their enemy, calling athiests like myself and scientists "God-hating liberals." You see, these people use the idea of God not as a loving and compassionate figure, but as a hateful bigot whose purpose is for the manipulation of any bigoted theologian. The "most devout Christians," it seems, refuse to acknowledge Jesus' altruistic teachings, and fall back onto the explicitly hateful OT God that mirrors their hate. They use God solly as a weapon against anyone they disagree with, damning them to Hell. The God of the Christian Right (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Jimmy Swaggart, Harriet Meirs, Hitler would be one if he were alive, his 3rd Reich speech about "Positive Christianity," etc), is deeply hateful , and, for thirty years, his followers have campaigned aginst the rights of gays, countered the civil rights movement, and recently called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are particularly, wrongfully famous for the airing of Robertson's 700 Club on September 13th 2001, where they blamed gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the ACLU, among other groups for the WTC attack. Google it.

[IrishCanadian]

Misanthrope< quotos to you for argueing so well and so enthusiastically for reason in the face of so many God-fearing people on this site. I just want to clarify a few things: it is not so that the best Christians fear God as a hateful bigot. Yes, we do fear God. But one must read the psalms as well as Revelation to understand our fear of the Lord (look at psalm 103, its pretty short). Furthermore, i'm not in any way blaiming you for this idea: the media tends to pick out all the liberally negative things that an institution does: this includes exlpoiting the antisame-sex marraige in an anti gay way (yes amny good Christians are anti gay but not Christianity itself is anti gay- see the beatitudes), other examples to show this about the media is that the only animal rights activists we hear about are the ones who toss paint on people's coats; the only only huge institution i can think of right now that gets off easy by the media is the govornment. Maybe this i because many television stations and newspapers are run by or motord by govorments.
As far as evolution is concerned I tend to lean towards genesis. The concept of "day" was not created until the fifth day so all that time before could have been any space of time. Furthermore, All scientists know that spontanious generation does not exist. Animals simply don't pop out of no where. The same goes for bone structur on a protazoa. I don't deny that the calouses on my feet are a form of evolution, but an ameaba cannot grow a leg and crawl out of the water: the idea is simply obsurd.

I would love to learn more about the subject of evolution vs creation and i know there are some excelent texts out there. In the mean time I have no quam with the southern schools of United States banning evolution from the cerriculum. (i'm bad at spelling). The kids there would benifit from the theory, yes it is only a theory, but not much more than they would from learning historical based ideas on this scientific issue.
Once again I really admire you for standing up for what you believe in, I hope to talk to you more on such matters.
Keep up the good work

[Logos]

I know it's difficult not to sometimes, but there is to be _no discussion_ of current politics in these forums.

[IrishCanadian]

sorry about that, thanks a lot for the reminder.

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

I like your open-mindedness, IrishCanadian :) First, you must understand that the aomeba didnt spawn into a human, thats impossible on all fronts :-p. Evolution, according to Darwin, was very, very, gradual, the birth of the earth, 6.5 BILLION years ago, then after that, I believe 3.5 billion years ago, single-celled organisms spawned out of a random mutation whose molectular structure changed in such a way as to provide the formula for living, DNA. These mutations probably were not sudden or significant, it probably took many mutations to get the combination correct. The theory holds that life started in the sea, single-celled organisms to small multi-celled aquatic organisms. Then the fish grew more diverse as time went on, and eventually formed into amphibians who can live out of the water for some time but are still dependent on it. Amphibians to reptiles, and the list grows exponentially, taking maybe several hundred thousand to a million years for each stage. 6.5 million years ago, the first human ancestor formed from chimpanzees, our closest relative. Anyone heard of Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis? The humans, it is believed, originated in Africa, but due to their small brain size and relatively unstable bipedal movement, it was unable to move very far away and had little intelligence. Soon (at 1.8 mya), Homo habilis became from the Australopithacus Africanus in Africa, and from our friend habilis came Homo erectus, who had a better posture, larger brain, and more developed feet. It is believed that Erectus spread from Africa into Asia minor and southern Europe, and that perhaps the groups evolved independently in different areas of the world, with different traits to cope with the sun (Asians have the eyelids to cope with the bright eastern sun, black people have black skin to stop overabsorption of UV rays because of their exposure to direct sunlight). After one more stage, the Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis around 40,000 ya, finally, we, Homo Sapiens, were formed around 3,500 ya. We and the Neanderthals supposedly existed for some time together, but they were wiped out either because of climate change or competition between the species.

You can certainly integrate God into the picture if you wanted, saying that "he tried different forms to find which work best," or "conditions on Earth wouldnt allow him to spawn species spontaneously," or "God's Time and our Time are completely different because of his omnipotence and/or immortality."

Evolution is still happening. Our pinkie fingers are smaller than those in the 1700s, we are fairer and, dare I say, more attractive than people back then, there was an experiment conducted recently involving E.Coli and a group of them, according to the researcher, developed a different method to process proteins than another group. The flu is an excellent example of evolution. Every year we must create a new vaccine to counteract the new variant. Exterminators alter their insecticide formula because of insects' immunity to it. You see, it is impossible for literal creationism to be correct. God's "Static World" wouldnt be able to account for forces that we know exist, such as interspecies competition and climate change.

[IrishCanadian]

Well I still am a little scepticle, I don't think I will take evolution as the ultimate truth on the matter ... but its really nice to have this information. I am told by a friend that the similarity between an ape's dna and my dna is only a small amount consisting of little more than one or two strands (or whatever you call them). Is this true? I may be an arts student, but a student nonetheless. Do you know of any decent texts that take the Darwinian thery into greater detail than this forum?
I want to have the whole story from both sides before i make a final descision on weather or not i believe evolution took place (or is taking place rather).

[Aurek_Waverly]

Have you ever read "The Case for A Creator" by Lee Strobel? If not, you really should. It has a very fast-paced journalistic agenda on creation vs. evolution. It really helped me understand my faith better.

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

The truth is, we share 90% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Have you ever seen a young child throw a temper tantrum? Chimp behavior. Mother-infant relationships? Primate behavior. How we find mates? Primates and humans are strikingly similar. We have hair on our bodies, though not as much as primates, a chimpanzee can recognize himself in front of a mirror, they can communicate through language. Though primates can't communicate verbally because their larynxes arent developed enough for precise sounds like ours, they are able, if we train them, they can learn sign language, and a week ago in Anthroplogy, we saw a video on chimpanzee and their responses to our language. The chimpanzee actually understood the commands given to him by the researcher, and some of these commands were quite complex. "Put the fern in the refridgerator." "Take the vacuum cleaner outside." "Pour the coke into the water." "Stop." "Get the fern from out of the refridgerator." Wouldnt you say that we're similar?

I took Anthroplogy (the study of humanity's origins and social structures, what we can say about humanity as a whole, from the US to the Yanomamo) last year in high school and I'm taking it again this year, so I pretty much know a lot about evolution. Last year I had to memorize every homonid from A. Afarensis to Homo Sapien Sapien.

[IrishCanadian]

But I'm talking about the actual DNA. The mathamatical scince. Everyhting you said (besides the sign language) also applies to foxes. We don't resemble foxes so no one considers us like them. Parrots (actaully crows can do it better) are able to carry conversations, I know ths first hand. I want to know the "how" not the "what". I don't mean how long it took and what happened, but the nitty gritty stuff like the exact chances of it happening and so on. Aurek, I wil chack out that book, thanks, but right no i don't have time. In the meanwhile this conversation between me and Misanthrope would be like me telling her (him?) that the Holy Spirit is real. That is something I believe as strongly as you do evolution. But each of us is harder to please on the foreign subject than ourselves because the subject is foriegn.

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html for chromosomal relationships between humans and chimps

[IrishCanadian]

Thanks Misanthrope

[Satirical]

I tell you something that helped with my "faith",reading the Origin of the Species, now that beats Strobel's appealing to those that want to hear it, any day.

[Adelheid]

The ONE book that has helped my faith is the Bible....lol

[Scheherazade]

The ONE book that has helped my faith is the Bible....lolThere is a shocker...

;)

[Adelheid]

Every year it has managed to be the bestseller. God is keeping His Word throughout all generations, as He said He would. How many countless time has Emperors, Dictators, Monarchs, etc. Tried to destroy that one Book? In China, I've read of mny rulers who have tried to get rid of every trace of that Book but burning it, and prohibiting imports of that book, and persecuting Missionaries and others who tries to bring in the Bible. I read of an account where a school teacher held up a black book in School one day, and announced to the classroom of students, "If your parents have a book like this, please bring it in tomorrow. I was give you money for it (or something like that)" A girl went home, and found the Bible her parents had hidden. She brought it to school the next day, and that was the last she ever saw her parents again. There are many other such accounts, of the Bible being burned, used as toilet paper, and all sorts of other ways unimaginable.

Yet here is still is today surviving- not only that, thrashing every other book too! There is no book that has ever been written or ever will be written that can compare with the Bible: Simply because it is the Inspired Word of God.

Don't you think then, if something has lasted for hundreds of years, and preserved by God, that there MUST be something to it? In this case, where people give testimonies, and all of nature gives solid evidence on there being a Creator, and the Bible being the Truth and not a Myth, shouldn't you give a heed to it? It has not been like the other books written by men which have dies ages ago, is long forgotten. No! it is still here, because God is gracious and merciful toward YOU, to give you a chance to find and accept the Truth for yourself, before it is too late.

[Pendragon]

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html for chromosomal relationships between humans and chimps
Now, you must have come across my own views on this thread somewhere and know where I stand. Now, for just a moment, allow yourself to imagine God as the ultimate scientific experimenter. What does a scientist do as he/she experiments? They work from simple experiments to the more complex. So let us imagine as God creates life on earth. He moves from the simple to the more complex until He crowns His creation by creating man. Would it then be odd that there are chromosomal relationships between man and what is generally accepted as the closest thing to man? I advocate the type of evolution called "adaptation", for if man had not changed since creation, we would all be one race, and we are not, for different people adapted to life in different lands. And what has man done, but destroy many of the species that were here? But "chance" I cannot believe for the variables that would have to be satisfied to make it take place would make the mathmatics of it happening astronomical.

[IrishCanadian]

As you can see above I've been doing a lot of thinking and research on the subjuect and I think I stand with Pendragon. Well thats my two cents.
Take it easy.

[Adelheid]

All of mankind knows that there is a God. They just choose to deny it. Why deny the truth and reality, you might ask? Well, all I can say is that without a God, they would be justified for doing many of the wicked acts that they would not otherwise be able to.

This is the foundation for my first statement.
"[That] was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." John 1:9

[atiguhya padma]

I can assure you Adelheid, that I do not know of God's existence. Unless you want to call me a liar, I suggest you modify your above statement.

[atiguhya padma]

<But "chance" I cannot believe for the variables that would have to be satisfied to make it take place would make the mathmatics of it happening astronomical.>

Would the mathematics be as astronomical as the chances of there being a god? If there is more chance of there being a god than there is of the Universe and all within being mere chance, then I imagine all physicists, biologists and mathematicians would believe in God.

[Loki]

Like AP, I don't know of the existence of any god(s), Adelheid. If I knew of the existence of a god - seen some evidence, or perhaps the being personally - then don't you think I'd believe in him or her?

[blp]

Every year it has managed to be the bestseller. God is keeping His Word throughout all generations, as He said He would. How many countless time has Emperors, Dictators, Monarchs, etc. Tried to destroy that one Book? In China, I've read of mny rulers who have tried to get rid of every trace of that Book but burning it, and prohibiting imports of that book, and persecuting Missionaries and others who tries to bring in the Bible. I read of an account where a school teacher held up a black book in School one day, and announced to the classroom of students, "If your parents have a book like this, please bring it in tomorrow. I was give you money for it (or something like that)" A girl went home, and found the Bible her parents had hidden. She brought it to school the next day, and that was the last she ever saw her parents again. There are many other such accounts, of the Bible being burned, used as toilet paper, and all sorts of other ways unimaginable.

Yet here is still is today surviving- not only that, thrashing every other book too! There is no book that has ever been written or ever will be written that can compare with the Bible: Simply because it is the Inspired Word of God.

Don't you think then, if something has lasted for hundreds of years, and preserved by God, that there MUST be something to it? In this case, where people give testimonies, and all of nature gives solid evidence on there being a Creator, and the Bible being the Truth and not a Myth, shouldn't you give a heed to it? It has not been like the other books written by men which have dies ages ago, is long forgotten. No! it is still here, because God is gracious and merciful toward YOU, to give you a chance to find and accept the Truth for yourself, before it is too late.

There are plenty of books older than the Christian Bible that are still around today and many of them are religious.

Insisting that the Bible is the Inspired Word of God is simply not argumentative evidence. It's just your opinion.

[Pendragon]

Would the mathematics be as astronomical as the chances of there being a god? If there is more chance of there being a god than there is of the Universe and all within being mere chance, then I imagine all physicists, biologists and mathematicians would believe in God.Your question is fair enough, AP. If we are talking the chances of some bizzare "accident" causing a few cells in the primordial soup to eventually become a thinking person, then yes, the chances of there being a God are greater. But as I pointed out once before, everybody is talking and nobody is really listening. I try to meet evolutionists at some point of agreement, but they want everything or nothing. In or out. We should be trying to find middle ground instead of insulting one another. Yes, some are so rabid as to never change, no matter what. But others are searching for that middle ground and offering no offense to the other side. I have never called an athesist names, nor insulted them in any way. I always try to ground an argument on something other than just "that's the way it is." If we cannot agree, we can at least agree to disagree, shake hands, and go on in friendship.

[Logos]

If you believe "A" that's fine. If you believe "B" that's fine.

If "Z" believes "A", don't call them stupid for doing so.

If "M" believes "B" don't call them stupid for doing so.

There have been a lot of personal insults and veiled personal derogatory comments directed at other posters in this topic and I'm tired of seeing it.

If you don't understand what a "flame" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming) is you can ask me. :)

I really really don't want to, but, if I see anymore flamey type content in posts I will edit or delete them.

[blp]

I really really don't want to, but, if I see anymore flamey type content in posts I will edit or delete them.

I guess this is directed at me in this instance, since I used the word 'stupid'. Sorry if I overstepped the mark. I'll edit myself.

[Logos]

Thank you for doing that blp :)

But actually there have been others too calling names you're not the first. But I doubt they will all apologise or edit their own posts. *sigh*

*not directed at anyone in particular*

People, they're words, text on a screen. If you feel you're getting too emotionally attached to your computer screen I suggest you turn your computer off, stand up, and go find the nearest human being and give them a big old hug.

*no I'm not a hippy :p

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

What is the purpose of a Creator? If "God" can be self-caused, cant Nature, too, be self-caused? Nature "selects" which organims will survive and which wont in any specific environment, and those that arent fit change or die.

Definition of "Fit:" Which organism has the most offspring, has nothing to do with any single trait, such as strength, intelligence, height, agility, etc.

No trait appears out of nowhere, it is either genetically dormant or active. You may be aware of someone carrying the gene for breast cancer, but she does not have breast cancer. The same goes for everything else. The trait originated in a certain genetic configuration and during conception of the sex cells, the body determines which trait it will use and which it will not.

About the Bible, one cannot completely trust the Bible. You must understand that there are passages and "laws" in that book which are so primitive compared to todays society.

Example: "Thou shalt not eat hoofed animals. They are detestable." Do you know why hoofed animals are detestable? Until the 1950s, they had no way of cleaning the carcasses of hoofed animals, and one must be very careful eating pork because they were diseased. But the authors of the Bible had little to no scientific or medical knowledge and displayed that ignorance in the form of "God."

Deuteronomy 21: 18-21: Essaentially, one may slaughter his children if they misbehave. Have you ever seen a devout Christian murder his children? Yes, sometime in history, pious people did. Ritualistic, religiously-driven child/spouse abuse was prevalent in the Middle-Ages, and it is today in isolated theocratic villages, such as Warren Jeffs' Christian community in Arizona. The beatings were almost always perpetrated by men to their wives and children. Sometimes the wife would beat the children.

Is "God" really "good"? Granted, if God does exist, why didn't he denounce even the most horrible atrocities committed in his name, such as the Holocaust, the Crusades, the anti-gay movement and Matthew Sheperd's religiously-motivated murder, or the bombing of abortion clinics? Why were there no more miracles after the Bible was written? Given His lack of response to these things done by people supposedly on His side, representing Him, there are two distinct possibilities for God: 1) God is Evil, or 2) God does not exist.

[Pendragon]

I do not, and would NEVER condone evil that is done in the name of God. Sadly, it exists and always has. But one cannot single out the Bible as an example of people abusing religous power, it was always done, even when they worshiped idols that were made by the most skillful artists among the people. The priests of the idols made the laws and woe betide whomsoever failed to obey. But if you use the hypocrite as a reason to dismiss the existence of God, it is a poor argument. For if that person really believed in God, he or she would not act like a hypocrite. Certainly, times have changed since the law of the Old Testament. The incidents you have pointed out are wrong, and I cannot condone those who do wrong, regardless of what they may preach. But letting a hypocrite get between you and God--think about it. They don't believe what they say they do and yet they are preventing you from believing as well!

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

It is the fact that their God has not shown them that they are wrong. Political Christians believe that Jesus will return if we revert to the laws of the Old Testament and totalitarian theocracy.

What is God's love really worth? As a living human being here and now, what is God's love worth to you? You cannot touch it, show physical affection in return, or sense anything from it and events provide continual evidence against that love, in the form of cancer, sudden death, violence, hatred, and ignorance. How do you explain God's love to a child whose mother has breast cancer?

[RusSpencer]

Could someone tell me what all the fuss is about? Exactly what difference does it make? If it's creation, then there are enough concepts of the Creator that we can all find one (or many) compatible with our beliefs--or else create a new Creator to suit our fancy. That's what mankind has always done.

However, I am opposed to teaching creationism in public, tax-supported schools. There is no scientific evidence to back it up; whereas evolution has tons of evidence to support it. If people want to believe in creationism or any other kind of mysticism, they should do it on their on time --or on my tax dollars that go to religious schools: "faith-based" political organizations. But I could go on and on about that. Nowadays it is hard to define exactly what a "public school" is, as religion continually and inexorably encroaches on Government. It they accept tax dollars, they should stick to teaching pure science, excluding the Bible, Koran, Talmud, etc., as textbooks.

[Pendragon]

It is the fact that their God has not shown them that they are wrong. Political Christians believe that Jesus will return if we revert to the laws of the Old Testament and totalitarian theocracy.

What is God's love really worth? As a living human being here and now, what is God's love worth to you? You cannot touch it, show physical affection in return, or sense anything from it and events provide continual evidence against that love, in the form of cancer, sudden death, violence, hatred, and ignorance. How do you explain God's love to a child whose mother has breast cancer?Meanwhile, Political Christians do not represent all of us. As for explaining God's love to the child whose mother has breast cancer, it would be a difficult task. But I have had to face explaining how someone who has been a minister since 1982 is now disabled due to bipolar illness which I inherited from my dad (who was not a Christian). I do not blame God because I have this illness, there are medicines here to help control it, and most of the time I do very well. When I start having episodes, we have to change medications or doses until we reach an even keel again. The reason for the disability is that no one can predict the episode cycles. For every illness there is a cure here somewhere, man just has to find it. I thank God that such dedicated men exist, who will try with everything within them to find the cures for illness that have none as of yet! Bad things do happen to good people, as in the book of Job. If anyone had a right to lose their faith, I did. People kicked me out of churches saying I was devil possessed since they could not understand the illness or why it struck me down. But I only became stonger for it. What does the love of God mean to me, as a mere human? More than you can imagine. I can love anyone, even those who do not understand me or love me in return. But I had to learn it by going through the fires I have been through. This is not a "pity me" post nor a "look at me" post. This is just saying that all who believe in God and the Bible are not the same. God bless. :angel:

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

Do you love out of the goodness of your conscience or because God instructed you to do so?

[Pendragon]

Do you love out of the goodness of your conscience or because God instructed you to do so?
That is a fair enough question. To be perfectly honest, a little of both. People who go through what I've been through these past 11 years usually do one of two things:
1.) They become so hard-hearted that nothing moves them
2.) They become very tender hearted

I became so tender hearted that I seriously would not wish what I have faced on my worst enemy, nor do I think anyone could do anything to me bad enough for me to wish it on them. And yes, I believe God would have me love everyone. So it's a bit of both, really. I make friends easily before religion is ever discussed, and I try to not hurt feelings--I've been hurt so badly myself that I don't want anyone hurt by me. :)

[DTrent]

Greetings, posters. I've just joined. Interesting topics, the lot of 'em!

My take on this subject? After investigating both sides - evolution & creation - I've come to find that many scientists do not even agree with each other on evolution.
There are also many people who feel that becuz there are soooooooo many books written on the subject of the theory of evolution that is MUST be true! Not so.
Whether a person is highly educated or not, both have plenty of info available to them to check it out for themselves so they can be properly informed. And since this is such an important subject to be sure about becuz our very lives are involved, it would do us ALL good to be informed so that we can make an informed choice. I applaud everyone's right to freedom of choice re:faith - Faith in evolution or faith in a Creator.

Now what about all those drawings of 'ape men' in school books, etc? Well, it seems the farther back they say something came from in history, the more 'monkey-like' the artists' conception becomes.
And since there are still monkeys, apes, gorillas & the like here on earth, mankind could not have evolved from them. Why? Becuz they are still here. They have not changed & neither have we humans.
Also, there could not ever have been a 'bridging of the gap' between man & ape becuz they cannot mate; they are of different 'kinds'. For ex: A lion & a tiger are of the cat family; they are of the same 'kind'. They can mate & you would get a "liger". (It's been done.) But you cannot mate a dog & a cat becuz they are of 2 different 'kinds'. But you CAN mate a wolf & a dog. Why? Becuz they are both of the dog family. But humans & apes are not of the same family or 'kind'.

I've found that believing in a Creator is just too simple for many 'highly educated' people to accept. Many also do not WANT to believe it becuz then they would be accountable to Someone & this, they do not want!

Has anyone else here found this to be true?

[Adelheid]

Like AP, I don't know of the existence of any god(s), Adelheid. If I knew of the existence of a god - seen some evidence, or perhaps the being personally - then don't you think I'd believe in him or her?

Isn't the earth around you the flowers, animals, plants, planets, stars all evidence of an unseen God who rules in the universe?

Isn't God's warning that Jesus is coming back soon through the Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, war and rumors of war evidence that God is keeping His Word? I don't know about you, Loki, but thats my opinion. :nod:

No. People can be stubborn. I can be too. :D But not everyone who believes that there is a God will choose to believe in Him. And that is for several reasons. Firstly, it may be that choosing to believe in a God will necessarily mean ceasation of several activities which are displeasing to God. Not everyone is eager to do that, therefore, they choose the easier option. Believing evolution. Don't you think that Evolution has holes in the theory? If you read both sides carefully, you will see it. The 'holes' in creation can be explained away. But the holes in the evolution theory cannot be.

I watched a documentary recently. There were several archeologists and scientists interviewed. from both the evolution and creation sides. And the amazing thing in that show was that even the evolutionists AGREED with the Creationists that were no link between apes and humans nowadays. The fossils were either humans or apes. Not in-betweens. How can you explain that away? That is what I mean by having no evidence. Besides, how do you know that the Lucy is not another fraud? Also, it could be an extinct human.

See, the holes in Creation... the strata of bones. Obviously according to the Bible, people only spread out AFTER the animals. so their bones would lie on top of the animals, which would have spread out long before the humans did. That is a totally explainable reason, and the hole is patched. But I can't find a way to patch the Evolution holes without compromising the Bible AND the evidence we find.

That is why any conclusion I make will be in favour of the view which involves a Creator God. :nod:

P.S. I hope I did not offend anyone in this post. :angel:

[kramraq]

Well, evolution is the same with "cause and effect", assuming Big Bang Theory is right which they say it's the beginning of time, what causes it by the way? or is it WHO causes everything to exist? think about it guys

[Miss Darcy]

It's not that easy, kramraq. Say there was a creator who "set off" the Big Bang.
Where did the creator come from?

[Pendragon]

I kind of feel like Yoda, here, but there is something I'm sensing in our posts--FEAR. Everyone seems to be afraid to listen to the other person for a moment. The most positive theological statement I ever read was in "Peanuts". Snoopy is writing a theological book entitled "Has It Ever Occured To You That YOU Could Be Wrong?" That is what none of us seem to want to face, that we could be proven wrong. That is the crux of the matter. If we listen the other person might make sense to some degree that might shake the foundations of the walls we have built around ourselves, regardless of what we may believe or disbelieve. So we choose the path of least resistance, which is to totally ignore anything that doesn't perfectly match our already decided belief. I ask all of us, creationest and evolutionist alike, is this an impartial, scientific approach? Man is capable of thought in order to question and think things through. If we were not, then we would believe whatever simply because we could not think of a reason not to do so. But we are not hearing each other, we are dismissing each other. It's doesn't become "let's explore that line of reasoning", it becomes "toss that out". How are we to learn from each other if everyone already has a made-up mind, and not a open one?

[kilted exile]

A question for those who believe in a "creator":

To what extent do agree with the idea of Pangea;Tectonic plate movement; age of the planet as 4.6billion years etc?

Are earthquakes;tsunamis;volcanic eruptions geologic processes or are they caused by a god-figure to punish/warn the population?

[Adelheid]

An answer to your last question, Kilted exile: both.

It is a warning from God using geological processes (because that seems to be the only things that gets to man) to warn and punish mankind accordingly. It is also a message from the God of Love for unbelievers to repent and believe.

The disasters can be a punishment. Israel was punished by disasters, so was Egypt, when Pharaoh refused to allow the Hebrew slaves to go free.

[Pendragon]

A question for those who believe in a "creator":

To what extent do agree with the idea of Pangea;Tectonic plate movement; age of the planet as 4.6billion years etc?

Are earthquakes;tsunamis;volcanic eruptions geologic processes or are they caused by a god-figure to punish/warn the population?A fair enough question. Let's see if I can answer without dismissing it as "unbiblical" and "toss it out."

That Pangea the "supercontinent" once existed I have no doubt. In Genesis, God says "Let the waters gather together in one place and let the dry land appear." Sounds very familiar. Then came the cataclysam of the flood, the destruction of the anceint world. Teutonic Plate Movement occured as a result and is still in measurable process, that I do not question. My family was so poor, that if we were not the poorest in town, I feel for whoever was! Jigsaw puzzles were cheap and good entertaintment. I can see where the peices fit together, and the rock strata matches. As for the age of the PLANET as 4.6 billion years, consider this from Genesis. "In the begining, God created the heavens and the Earth." Note that period, it's very important. "And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness moved upon the face of the deep". Note the second period, also important. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Third period. "And God said, let there be light, and there was light." See, the Earth was made before the six day (six thousand year) period of creation ever began! How long did it hang there before God got around to finishing it? You'll notice that rock is not one of the things mentioned in the days of creation. Why? It had already been made! The unfinished Earth hung in space a formless mass, perhaps of volcanic upheavals, for are not all births a mess? for how long? We don't know from a Biblical account. So a Scientific account that says rocks are 4.6 billion years old is perfectly acceptable. Nice chatting with you. :nod:

[Satirical]

Pendragon you are using the same line of reasoning that the church fathers used originally. If it fits into what you want to believe, then change it. You are attempting to take apart scientific theories so you may have LOGICAL evidence for what you are defending. Let us take a break from this for a moment.
The bible is a very poetic group of books. They are all different in their own right, and should never be looked at as a whole(that is just blind zeal). If you would like to be LOGICAL about the bible then you would have to take into account the writing in that first book, and attempt to see whether or not the author was being metaphorical or sincere, much like any other work. Genesis, to me seems as though it was written to be sincere, we must keep in mind that it is a creation myth, and they have always tended to be outlandish(Anglo-Saxons, Bushmen et cetera...). They have for the most part meant to be true by their letters, no sign of figurative. This is what has happened in the chapter of Genesis, but no one says this, it doesn't fit into the church "granchildrens" game plan!

[Pendragon]

Pendragon you are using the same line of reasoning that the church fathers used originally. If it fits into what you want to believe, then change it. You are attempting to take apart scientific theories so you may have LOGICAL evidence for what you are defending. Let us take a break from this for a moment.
The bible is a very poetic group of books. They are all different in their own right, and should never be looked at as a whole(that is just blind zeal). If you would like to be LOGICAL about the bible then you would have to take into account the writing in that first book, and attempt to see whether or not the author was being metaphorical or sincere, much like any other work. Genesis, to me seems as though it was written to be sincere, we must keep in mind that it is a creation myth, and they have always tended to be outlandish(Anglo-Saxons, Bushmen et cetera...). They have for the most part meant to be true by their letters, no sign of figurative. This is what has happened in the chapter of Genesis, but no one says this, it doesn't fit into the church "granchildrens" game plan!And, boom--that lasted a long time, didn't it? I make no questions on what others believe and discuss them intead of tossing them out. Now this post calls creation a myth, questions the author of Genesis' sincerity, refers to outlandish beliefs, etc. Do I do that to you? Do I ever say anything at all about evolution in this way? I have questioned the science behind certain branches of evolution, but in a polite manner. I even accept a form of evolution, that of adaptation of species to the environment. You want all or none. I will not give up my faith for anyone. You put in 25 or more years into studying the Bible, breaking it down book by book. I have a bookshelf dedicated to this study, with reference books and various translations. I always question everything. That's why I believe in God and the Bible. Some of it is, as you say, metaphorical, there for us to learn from, not as true happenings. But consider this for a moment: most myths are rooted in truth somewhere...I have said far too much. God bless. :angel: :wave:

[Satirical]

So if most myths are rooted in truth somewhere does that mean that L.Ron Hubbard is sometimes right? I was not meaning to offend you which I am sure I did by the cyber tone, and fallacious response, so hey....now harm no foul. By the way, I was truly responding to the concept and not to you so don't go making everything personal (do I do this to you blah). Most bible backers do question everything that you mentioned above, and do not think twice about saying they did not. As for your 25 years of study, some people spend their whole lives doing the same thing and come to different conclusions, what do you say about that? Go ahead and feed that ego, they just missed something that your great big brain caught, right?
(FYI) I am one of those that has spent the majority of my life studying the bible book by book as you so nicely put it. And believe me, you have said nothing that I have not heard before. Too bad it in itself is a myth. Proposition no.1

Oh and one more thing, I think that in you transferred your want for everything to be all or none to me, problem is that it is obvious that this is what you are looking for.

[Pendragon]

So if most myths are rooted in truth somewhere does that mean that L.Ron Hubbard is sometimes right? I was not meaning to offend you which I am sure I did by the cyber tone, and fallacious response, so hey....now harm no foul. By the way, I was truly responding to the concept and not to you so don't go making everything personal (do I do this to you blah). Most bible backers do question everything that you mentioned above, and do not think twice about saying they did not. As for your 25 years of study, some people spend their whole lives doing the same thing and come to different conclusions, what do you say about that? Go ahead and feed that ego, they just missed something that your great big brain caught, right?
(FYI) I am one of those that has spent the majority of my life studying the bible book by book as you so nicely put it. And believe me, you have said nothing that I have not heard before. Too bad it in itself is a myth. Proposition no.1

Oh and one more thing, I think that in you transferred your want for everything to be all or none to me, problem is that it is obvious that this is what you are looking for.For the record, I apologize to you personally, and to anyone else that may have been offended by my post. I try to follow peace with all men (and women). No, I don't have all the answers, I'm no "big brain", I have no "ego" left to bruise. I make myself no more or no less than just human, prone to the same mistakes and fallices of the whole race. I don't call evolution a "myth" or science "of the devil". If I disagree with it, so be it. Everyone should be settled in their own mind. But please allow me the same. If I believe the Bible, so be it. It doesn't harm anyone who wishes to not believe in it. I do not want all or none. If not for science, my life would be unbearable, since the illness I have requires medicine that I must take daily. You might ask "Couldn't God heal you?" Yes. But it is a burden that I carry and if He would heal me right now that would not be my request of Him, for the needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the one. I extend a palm leaf in friendship. How will you respond? :)

[Logos]

Please don't make me edit posts to remove the comments in them that are pointedly directed personally at another member. And yes Satirical your post caused me to post this.

[Satirical]

Yet the abstraction was not enough. I understand and apologize. Let us have the leaf.

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

An answer to your last question, Kilted exile: both.

It is a warning from God using geological processes (because that seems to be the only things that gets to man) to warn and punish mankind accordingly. It is also a message from the God of Love for unbelievers to repent and believe.

The disasters can be a punishment. Israel was punished by disasters, so was Egypt, when Pharaoh refused to allow the Hebrew slaves to go free.

I smell a threat to believe, a tactic a lot of Christians use to get others to believe. Shame on you. "God will punish you." Those stories are myths and folklore, no one knows if the Medeterranian Sea was really morphed into a sea of blood or Moses' staff transformed into a snake. And if God was one of "Love" would he use threats and his power as a weapon against unbelievers? Job was a devout believer, and look what his God let Satan do to him! It looks like you, Alheid, follow Pat Robertson, using God to predict and provide vengeful explanations for natural occurances. God loves humanity, and I'm the Queen of Britain!

Heres the problem with ID, clearly and nicely stated in Time this week: ID halts the adventure to discover things. They throw their hands in the air and say "I dont know! God did it!" It provides nothing for science. We want to know the natural reasons and causes for our existence, how DNA works and how/why mutations and changes occur. ID will not provide any of that.
In Philosophy we covered the ID argument, and there are countless objections:

1) If God was self-caused, couldnt nature be self-caused also?
2) What caused God?
3) God could have done better (appendixes, pancreas, 2 kidneys, tonsils, we are full of things we really dont need that "God" could have omitted.)

Is God really moral? Oh I wrote a 3-page paper on all of the things His followers did throughout history, and a book on morality called The Science of Good & Evil by Michael Shermer provided most of the paper. Suggested reading if you want to know about how a lot atheists can be more moral than some Christians. Shermer used data from many Christian poll organizations on various topics like being a good samaritan, divorce rates, intolerance, cheating on exams, (these were all completed by self-proclaimed Chistians) and concluded that "Not only does religion not necessarily make on more moral, but it can also lead to greater amounts of racism, sexism, and an erosion of cherished values that are so important to a democratic society" (236).

[Mortis Anarchy]

The thing about this subject is that one part of you can believe in evolution but another have total faith that God is the cause of this and scientists have no idea what they are talking about. Or at least this is the case with me. My mind says its evolution that no other reason is plausible but, my faith and my heart object. I guess we only really find out when we die.

[clandestine]

Originally posted by RusSpencer
I am opposed to teaching creationism in public, tax-supported schools. There is no scientific evidence to back it up; whereas evolution has tons of evidence to support it.

I don't see a problem in teaching creationism in public schools. However, I don't think it should be taught in biology class. Many of the proposals for introducing creationism into public schools call for it to be taught in science classes right along side evolutionism, and as an alternative to it. Therein lies the problem: there is no scientific evidence, to back up 'intelligent design' theories. Creationism does not belong in a science class, but in a philosophy class. It is not based in science; rather, it is based in faith. Creationism would be just as much out of place in a biology class as it would be in an algebra or geometry class.

[Pendragon]

Is God really moral? Oh I wrote a 3-page paper on all of the things His followers did throughout history, and a book on morality called The Science of Good & Evil by Michael Shermer provided most of the paper. Suggested reading if you want to know about how a lot atheists can be more moral than some Christians. Shermer used data from many Christian poll organizations on various topics like being a good samaritan, divorce rates, intolerance, cheating on exams, (these were all completed by self-proclaimed Chistians) and concluded that "Not only does religion not necessarily make on more moral, but it can also lead to greater amounts of racism, sexism, and an erosion of cherished values that are so important to a democratic society" (236).A question, please. You and I have spoken before, so you know I do NOT condone evil done in the name of Christianity or in the name of God, whatever religion people may follow. But does teaching evolution do anything to stem the tide of this same flow of evil? And if there have been people through out history, (and there have) who have used the name of God and religion for hypocritical purposes, does that mean everyone is to be tarred with the same brush? It is like finding a counterfeit $20. You don't then throw out every one you have, but you do examine them closely. Why do people make counterfeits? Because there is something real out there that people may mistake it for to give it value. It's just something to think about. Not everyone who holds a Bible and talks the talk actually walks the walk unfortunately, and it makes it hard for anyone to trust someone who talks about the Bible. Olive branch?

[ThatIndividual]

clandestine is right. teaching creationism in biology would be as bad as teaching the ten commandments in ethics class -- or something. actually, no, it would be quite worse, because ethics is a branch of philosophy, whereas, science is supposed to be empirical. If creationism must be included, and i don't see why it should in any class but a religion course, it should be taught in a philosophy of biology class, or even just plain philosophy. (but in a class in just plain philosophy I'm sure there is no time to cover such a trifle)

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

"But does teaching evolution do anything to stem the tide of this same flow of evil?" This "flow of evil" is not associated with science or secularism, I can assure you. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-1798944-2,00.html The study that the article refers to is here: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

From Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, Creationism/ID "'would be like the Flat Earth Society insisting their theory be taught in the public schools'" (166).

There are a lot of weird theories about the world and people. Why arent scientologists rallying for public acceptance of their theories as well (that we were created by aliens)?

We recently tackled the teleological argument (the ID/Creationism argument for Gods existence) in Philosophy, and despite popular opinion in the class (that "Adam & Eve rode dinosaurs to church" [Tina Fey, Weekend Update on SNL]), the idea fell flat on its face. You cant teach something in science class that cant even hold its own in Philosophy. In fact, none of the proofs of the existence of God held up. It's all about legitimizing bad science, and scientists wont have it. Science is the search for applicable and objective truths. You can believe that Adam & Eve rode dinosaurs to church all you want, but science will continue as science.

[ThatIndividual]

It is actually high time that Christians embrace evolution. Christianity and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. Genesis can certainly be read, and quite reasonably, as a metaphor for what science supports as the actual history of our universe/world. Furthermore, God having caused evolution to occur, could have still sent a son to sacrifice to the sinners of the world. (Do note, in case you are unfamiliar with my frequent posts concerning christianity, I am not a christian.)
Shunning evolution, and clinging to the asinine belief that the world is no more than 10,000 years old, only causes the learned community to disregard Christian beliefs as unfounded and outrageous, and Christianity as no more than a highly successful cult.
Science is not a collection of "flaming darts" shot from the sling of the "evil one." It is science. It is mathematical. Christ or no Christ, God gave man a rational mind, and may in fact be quite offended if we were to shun the use thereof.

[Pendragon]

You know, a philosophy class doesn't make the best platform for throwing out creationism. Philosophy doesn't really deal with absolutes, but with gray areas. Still many philosophers and many scientists do believe in a devine being. And they have no real problem with that being starting the whole thing off, as it were. The problem seems to lie with the Bible itself, they have trouble accepting anything written therein as devinely inspired, or anything but retold myths. If that be their stand, then OK, let them act as they see fit, I believe in freedom and the first admendment. But I will expect the same from them in return, my freedom to believe as I will. And even if we disagree, I still would defend their right to have no religion or any that they choose as strongly as I defend my own! And you can go to the bank with that!

[ThatIndividual]

[QUOTE=Pendragon]You know, a philosophy class doesn't make the best platform for throwing out creationism.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. Would you kindly clarify?

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

Pendragon, do you know what philosophy is?

Philo - Love
Sophia - of knowledge

While philosophers do deal predominantly with grey areas, it does hold that the Scientific Method of Belief is the best method of belief. They seek to find out what things are defended best, to believe whatever has the most evidence to support it. Philosophy could, in my opinion, be called an "intellectual science."

Of course some scientists believe in a divine being, but that doesnt lead to a strict, rigid adherence to some ancient book. The Founding Fathers believed in a Creator, but had no respect for the Bible.

With that being said, lets look at Evolution and Creationism:

Creationism: A 10,000 year old book of ancient laws and myths, a few billion followers (which doesnt count as "evidence")

Evolution: Fossil records, physical data, DNA, geneology, behavioral similarities between species which one can observe and many have written about, real species variation (Flu variants, adaptation to insecticides, etc).

Which do you think the philosopher will be more likely to believe?

[greenburke]

The problem with Evolution is that Evolution is more than a theory based upon science. "Science," by definition is what we can study and observe.

What can we study and observe.
First, in order for our observable, tangible Universe- (by the way Universe in Latin means single spoken sentence) -three things need to come into existence simultaneously.
1. Time 2. Space 3. Matter

The Evolution Theory does not account for the true start, the absolute beginning of the Universe, because Evolution fails to solve how time and space came into existence.
The theory of evolution only accounts for matter, and at that Evolution claims that all the matter of the Universe was once rolled up into a dot no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence (Paraphrased from Stephen Goul). This Big Bang Theory also claims that this really heavy dot (In the Greek that is an "Infinitesimal Region), this dot that contained all the matter necessary to make me and you, evolved from literally nothing. Not only is the Big Bang Theory fanciful, it is flatly contradicted by Modern Science. "Matter can not arise from non-matter." Something can't come from nothing.
Even if it was "Billions and Billions of years ago."

The only way the known Universe could have come into existence was if Time, Space, and Matter we brought into being simultaneously.

The only place that is explained is found in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Beginning- time Heavens- space Earth- matter

As for the young Earth, take a couple quick examples:

The Earth’s core is cooling down, if the Earth was a billion years old, the Earth’s core would be cold, done, no magnetic fields. In fact all the stars are cooling down and they could not be millions of years old.

The moon is getting farther and farther away from the Earth, which means at one time it was closer. If the Earth was millions of years old the moon would have been so close that the tides would have continually flooded the earth.

The Earth’s rotation is slowing down, which means it was spinning faster before, of the Earth was millions of years old, the Coriolis Effect would have been out of control, the wind would have over 500 miles an hour.

If people had been around for 3 million years there would be ten—thousand people per square inch of the planet, the current Population curves down close to zero 0 around 4,400 years ago (roughly the time of the Biblical Flood).

The oldest Tree isn’t older than 4,000 years old; the biggest desert isn’t older than 4,400 years old.

The Evolutionist believes, in the beginning was DIRT, but they can’t explain how it got there.
The Bible teaches that God created the heavens and earth in seven days, and I can’t tell how God got there, but God’s very character is eternal.

Evolution is a crumbling theory (2nd law of Thermodynamics, everything goes from order to chaos), take Evolution out of Science classes and put it in the world religions or philosophy class.

For more and more precise facts, check out drdino.com

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

There are flaws with what you say. It doesnt matter how "big" something is, its how much matter (atoms) are contained in it. It didnt contain the material to make "me and you," that came much later, when atoms bonded together, as the first step, to form DNA, then came single-celled organisms, which asexually reproduced, etc.

Your theory with population is incorrect because you are not accounting for diease, climate change, or natural disasters or interspecies competition. There are many factors that contribute to population size, and no population steadily increases from start to extinction.

The biggest tree is 4,000 years old. So? Disease, natural disasters, etc. It also depends on the species of tree and its life span. As long as trees live, they dont live forever.

Dirt: Lava to molten rock which erodes by the sea always putting steady pressure on it (seven wonders are bizarre rock formations due to water), rock degrades to sand, and dirt is sand mixed with other elements.

If you can't determine what Time is, how are you supposed to define "Eternal?"

[Oblivion437]

Do you have any hard facts to support that?

Besides, if the 2nd law of thermodynamics directly applied to biology* how could the universe have lasted even eight thousand years?

*Law 2 of thermodynamics (Entropy) doesn't directly apply to the field of biology or to the Earth, the Earth is not a closed system of matter or energy, and biological systems behave in distinctly anti-thermodynamic behaviors. The formation of gastrula from ovum, and that gastrula's eventual development into a human being is proof of this. Hell, there are even examples of counter-entropy in theoretically entropic systems, namely the formation of crystalline structures. Osmosis and leveling aren't constants, merely common. To confuse the two elements, or to over-broadly attempt to implicate information's probative value, is one mistake science itself seeks to correct.

If anything, the real flaw with Darwinian evolution is its racism. Darwin himself was highly racist, and a supporter of fellow racist biologists. That was why a primarily Christian intelligentsia bought into it. They were also hard-core bigots. The term 'unapologetically racist' is typically reserved for that movie (I know the name of the damn movie, but I don't want to drop it needlessly, and potentially derail the thread) by DW Griffith, the writings of FW Nietszche, and the 'typical' attitude in 'white' America. However, all those pale in comparison to people who frothed at multiple orifaces to justify their self-serving notions of ethnic superiority, which they as court historians to powerful kings did sell for centuries.

[Satirical]

The only place that is explained is found in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

You need to read up on your history, you seem to be pulling from Anglo-Saxon resources only. There are at least two continents with differing opinions.

The Earth’s core is cooling down, if the Earth was a billion years old, the Earth’s core would be cold, done, no magnetic fields. In fact all the stars are cooling down and they could not be millions of years old.

Understanding what I do of physics, this is nothing to even look at. It takes millions of years for the combination to run its course. For the stars we must also take into account that our closest star is 4.4 light-years away from us, which means we have a later look on things, so come on, what is time in that sense. You are going to have to bring some hard credibility to pull this one off.

The moon is getting farther and farther away from the Earth, which means at one time it was closer. If the Earth was millions of years old the moon would have been so close that the tides would have continually flooded the earth.

I am almost sick of Kepler by now. The moon comes and goes, that is known. Elliptical!

If people had been around for 3 million years there would be ten—thousand people per square inch of the planet, the current Population curves down close to zero 0 around 4,400 years ago (roughly the time of the Biblical Flood).

Cite your facts, and good facts not some creationist website, this is just wrong on so many levels. BYW evolution from common descent.lol


The Evolutionist believes, in the beginning was DIRT, but they can’t explain how it got there.

Neither can you. Does that make evolution wrong? Ad hominum TO ad absurdum.


Evolution is a crumbling theory (2nd law of Thermodynamics, everything goes from order to chaos), take Evolution out of Science classes and put it in the world religions or philosophy class.

Superfluous if you were right. He said and she said does not hold up, but I am not Aristotle.

I do not mean to step on toes, but not anyone here is a scientist on the topics and all I seem to be reading is speculation. This is the reason that people that come to the internet looking for information are so confused, "there are as many opinions as there are people"(Cicero) When will we learn that misinformation is not the solution, it just hides the problem with a veil of arrogance. Take the works of your favorite author and gather their opinion on the world, but don't espouse it as the end-all of history, are you Lucretuis? are you Saul? were they right? are they not authors themselves? and, saying that, are we not merely readers?

[bluewire]

Even if someone knew what happened in the beginning of the universe, there would still be people who would doubt. There is no such thing as truth. <---Get this into your head. If enough people believe in something does it make it true? No. If you can logically explain why this or that point of view is true does it make it true? No. We live in a world where it is possible to doubt the very existence of yourself. Truth is a point of view. Scientific facts have done as much for society as any religion's point of view on creation.

[Pendragon]

[QUOTE=Pendragon]You know, a philosophy class doesn't make the best platform for throwing out creationism.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. Would you kindly clarify?I simply meant that philosophy doen't negate creationism in and of itself. That philosophy will argue more with the Bible than with whether or not a creator was involved in the begining of things. It's the Biblical record that people question most of all. Using philospophy, you may prove to everyone's satisfaction that everything is just an illusion and nothing really exists. However, others do not appear to agree. I am content to leave it lay and believe as I choose and allow them to do the same. This bickering gives me a headache. :wave:

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

Even if you could prove Evolution wrong, that in no way makes creationism right (Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer).

If evolution is wrong, biologists will pick up the adventure again. Dont ever think scientists will resort to mysticism to explain the origins of life.

[ThatIndividual]

Pendragon, I see what you are saying about philosophy, but the thing is that that is the point!

Evolution doesn't dispute that there is a creator, it disputes the literal interpretation of Genesis. It doesn't even dispute Christianity. It disputes beliefs such as the one that states that the world is not more than 10,000 years old.

I believe in God AND evolution. Natural selection, by the way, is more than provable. No one who has ever studied science with an open mind would dispute this 'theory.' It's to be seen. Only look, and you will see.

[greenburke]

On Truth-
The men and women with the greatest breadth of mental capacity are those who recognize and willingly accept truth when they see it, and are willing to identify underlying principles and trace from cause and effect. –Vance Ferrell

One man says, “There is no truth! Ahah! I have found… truth.”
To say that there is no truth does sound very philosophically relevant and post-modern, unless you look at the definition of truth.
I typed in truth at dictionary.com and I was given the following definition

truth –
1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
3. Sincerity; integrity.
4. Fidelity to an original or standard.
5.
a. Reality; actuality.
b. often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate
When I typed in truth the definition was not “No such queries found, no available matches” or “does not presently exist” or “none.”
So when you say there is no truth, you have a different definition of truth than stated by the common dictionary.
To sate that man’s doubt alone dictates truth is shallow and irrelevant. Doubt does exist, it is observable, but doubt itself does not determine if there are facts, facts determine if there should be doubt, indecision, and skepticism. And if you show me that there is no truth by trying to verify it you are digging yourself into a bigger hole that you started with. When one states “there is no truth” and one sincerely believe the integrity of the statement, one conforms to the facts, the reality, the truth their statement, than they are caught by their own statement. One cannot logically travel outside this statement. If there is no truth (validity), then there is no space to argue against truth, without conformity to your own “truth” (although a gross misnomer) that there is no truth.

[greenburke]

“You need to read up on your history, you seem to be pulling from Anglo-Saxon resources only. There are at least two continents with differing opinions.”

On Anglo-Saxon resources-

1. The Bible was written by Jewish authors.

2. The Bible is just as much an Anglo-Saxon resource as the Koran, the sayings of Confucius or Karma-Sutra, just because they are popular among Anglo-Saxons does not make the text Anglo-Saxon.

3. Anglo-Saxon’s have shown a history of despising Jews, the main cast of the Bible, Anglo-Saxons have shown a history of not reading the Bible and making mystic creeds and un-Biblical doctrines (prayer to Mary, assigning who became a saint).
Adam was not an Anglo-Saxon, neither the prophet Isaiah, Jesus is not an Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon’s became distinguished after the Bible was written.

5. Russia and its Orthodox Church follow the Bible, they are not Anglo-Saxon.
Many Africans haves followed the Bible ever since Phillip preached to that eunuch in the book of Acts.
And more importantly than just following the Bible they found salvation from the word’s of Christ, from His death and Resurrection.
In the case of the Biblical worldwide flood, it is found in the folklore of 120 tribes worldwide.

[greenburke]

“Besides, if the 2nd law of thermodynamics directly applied to biology* how could the universe have lasted even eight thousand years?”

“[B]iological systems behave in distinctly anti-thermodynamic behaviors.”

On the Second law of Thermodynamics-
“All systems will tend to the most mathematically probable state, and will eventually become totally random and disorganized.” –Ferrell

Energy + Time does not = Bigger and Better and more complex.

Energy is destructive when it is without purpose.

The suns rays are destructive to everything on Earth. The sun will peel the paint of your designed car, the sun’s energy will wreck the roof of your designed house, crumble the grand designs of the Pantheon (Ancient Ruins need energy and time to crumble). Except one tiny molecule chlorophyll, that helps plants grow, but even plants whither.

Bigger is not always better, smaller is more complex. There is a picture of an Ant holding a microchip in it’s mouth, the complexities of a microscopic amoeba are astounding. Man is smaller than any dinosaur. The earth is smaller than the sun.

“There is a natural tendency of all observed systems to go from order to disorder, reflecting dissipation of energy available for future transformation-the law of increasing entropy.”-R.R. Kinsday, “Physics to What extent is It Deterministic,” in American Science 56 (1968)

There should have been a lot of evolution going on in the stars, because they are best open systems. This open system argument effectively negates the 2nd law anywhere in the universe, except the cold reaches of outer space, and cold planets distant from stars.

The Earth’s moon receives as much energy from the sun as Earth does, but it just turn to dust. If sunlight disclaimed the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, physicists and scientists like Einstein would have discarded it.

Energy by itself increases entropy, so random heat or energy will increase entropy.

But, energy that is brought into a system from the outside, and which is intelligently controlled and directed can temporarily interfere with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It can for a time apparently stop entropy. Still, deliberate ongoing effort has to be expended to accomplish this feat.

Ordered systems such as maintaining the human body, are working within the Second law, not outside it.

“Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems.” –John Ross, Chemical Engineering news, July 7, 1980, p.4 [Harvard University reasearcher].

[Satirical]

The Bible is just as much an Anglo-Saxon resource as the Koran, the sayings of Confucius or Karma-Sutra, just because they are popular among Anglo-Saxons does not make the text Anglo-Saxon.

Most of everything else you have written were off base, but this is unacceptable! What are you saying here. Ethnocentrisim is rampant.

[Satirical]

The only place that is explained is found in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

There are several other places where this can be explained in several other countries in several other continents. This was not the only place that this could and has been explained, that is what I meant by Anglo-Saxon resources. In fact, if I recall correctly the universe was created prior to the writing of the Old testemant, which is, for me, another way of saying that it had been written about previously.

BTW, do you know what I mean when I say Anglo-Saxon? I think you are confused.

[greenburke]

By the by Satirical
Your complete Anglo Saxon point is utterly Ad Hominem,
and your ethnocentric arguement is a complete fallacy.

Even if the Bible and me were catagorized as "Anglo-Saxon,"
that does not mean my argument does not hold water, simply on that.

"Most of everything else you have written were off base" -Satirical

"...you seem to be pulling from Anglo-Saxon resources only. There are at least two continents with differing opinions." -Satirical

If I was pulling only from Anglo-Saxon sources (which I'm not),
that does not discredit my arguemnt, please check your fallacies.
I don't need to contend with it, beacuase it's irrelevant.

Of course their are differing opinions of Creation and Evolution on other continents, even on this same continent, that does not discredit my argument, you discredit your self by making the claim.

Using the Bible does make my arguement any less strong, although unpopular.
Can you show eqaully strong, supportive facts, for evolution?
Without jabbing at irrelevancies? I made a claim, now support yours own.

"It takes millions of years for the combination to run its course" -Satirical

Can you make back-up your claim? Can you even logically show that the earth is more than 10,000 years old without calling names?

As for the rest of you- I beg for facts, not just disagreements.

"It doesnt matter how "big" something is, its how much matter (atoms) are contained in it." -misanthrope

Evolution is completely concerned with how "big" something is, to the evolutionsist, things get bigger and better, it's you who have to prove how all the matter in the Universe, obviously the more matter there is the more space it takes up. Atoms or otherwise.

It's up to you to prove how more matter magically grew from less matter, and less complex matter without design, try to adequetly show and convince me with reason, and disprove the First Law of Thermodynamics, "matter does not arise from not matter." Somply stated you can't get more from less. Atoms, Matter, Hamburgers, light bulbs, you can't get more from less.
You have to work with what you already have.

[greenburke]

I did account for all that, you assume too much. I am stating that Creationism is right,
I never stood on the foundation that if evolution was wrong Creation suddenly becomes right.
You are the one who said, "if you could prove Evolution wrong, that in no way makes creationism right" -Misanthrope.

You haven't made any clear argument against Creation, you simply used the old fashion ad hominem fallacy,
by calling creation mysticism, and claiming scientists as authorities without giving any sound reason for why they are authorities, and why what they say should be the benchmark. Give me facts, not the old "evolution is science" (even though you don't know why), no evolution is religion, it takes faith to believe , and at many points does not rely on science.

[Loki]

For firsts, welcome to the forum, greenburke. :D

For seconds...I suppose if you've grown up with Christianity all this God business is hard to avoid believing. I guess it's also easy to believe that a scientific theory with a solid record of fossils, DNA proof (btw did you know that we share 99.4 % of the DNA with chimpanzees? Physiologically, we are a member of the Great Apes, African ones at that), adaptation, and so much more is no more supported by facts than a rather old piece of literature that states the world is flat, pi=3, snakes talk, etc.

Earlier on, you stated that evolution is a flawed theory due to the fact that


The Evolution Theory does not account for the true start, the absolute beginning of the Universe, because Evolution fails to solve how time and space came into existence.

No offence, but evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with the beginning of the universe! Evolution is merely a theory describing life and how it evolves.


Evolution: The theory that groups of organisms change with passage of time, mainly as a result of natural selection, so that descendants differ morphologically and physiologically from their ancestors.

The beginning of the universe - the beginning of spacetime (time is the fourth dimension of space, there is no such thing as "absolute" time...time is elastic and can be warped by gravity) is described by the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory and Theory of Evolution are two very different things.

It is useless to ask what happened "before" the Big Bang because there was, in effect, no before - the Big Bang was the beginning of time and space, there was nothing, no time and no space, before this.


The only place that is explained is found in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

I'm curious, where did this God of yours come from?

I know that real science is a bit difficult to swallow after reading a lot of sweet-tasting creationist hogwash, but as a rational human being surely you must question the validity of the "science" of creationism? (If you're interested in one of the many reasons I'm not being really polite about this so-called science then I'd recommend you to read "Telling Lies for God" by Ian Plimer.)

If you'd like to be exposed to some real science then I'd recommend Richard Dawkins' A Devil's Chaplain (a collection of essays) or River Out of Eden, which are most applicable to the subjects being discussed. If you're interested in a more general background on science, then I'd recommend Paul Davies or Stephen Hawking. My personal favourites. :)

Just an interesting off-side, did you know that according to new neurology research, our brains are still evolving?

Loki

[Pendragon]

Pendragon, I see what you are saying about philosophy, but the thing is that that is the point!

Evolution doesn't dispute that there is a creator, it disputes the literal interpretation of Genesis. It doesn't even dispute Christianity. It disputes beliefs such as the one that states that the world is not more than 10,000 years old.

I believe in God AND evolution. Natural selection, by the way, is more than provable. No one who has ever studied science with an open mind would dispute this 'theory.' It's to be seen. Only look, and you will see.Let's go all the way back here:

#651
Pendragon
You know, a philosophy class doesn't make the best platform for throwing out creationism. Philosophy doesn't really deal with absolutes, but with gray areas. Still many philosophers and many scientists do believe in a devine being. And they have no real problem with that being starting the whole thing off, as it were. The problem seems to lie with the Bible itself, they have trouble accepting anything written therein as devinely inspired, or anything but retold myths. If that be their stand, then OK, let them act as they see fit, I believe in freedom and the first admendment. But I will expect the same from them in return, my freedom to believe as I will. And even if we disagree, I still would defend their right to have no religion or any that they choose as strongly as I defend my own! And you can go to the bank with that!
Is it possible that you failed to catch the part where I said that the problem seems to lie with the fact that philosophers and scientists can't accept the Biblical records as written? And if we go even further back you will find that I believe in Evolution, the type known as adaptation of species to environment, which causes changes. But my faith in God as the Creator remains unshaken. I will admit that the age of the Earth and the animals remains a mystery, and that since time itself means nothing to God, the time measurements in Genesis are arbitrary. One thing that struck me recently though, was the National Geographic Special on the chimpanze that had always walked upright like a man. His head was also shaped differently. Science began to wonder if he were perhaps a crossbreed. DNA proved he was a chimp, but had an extra chromozone. His face and head reminded me a lot of the "Lucy" being. He was that one in a million chance that is possible, but not probable. Still, he existed, and they have pictures, film footage, his DNA, and his skeleton for proof. But it makes me wonder about some fossil evidence where they only have 1 skull or so. Do they really have a complete species, or is it that same one in a million chance repeated?

[greenburke]

No offence, but evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with the beginning of the universe! Evolution is merely a theory describing life and how it evolves.



The beginning of the universe - the beginning of spacetime (time is the fourth dimension of space, there is no such thing as "absolute" time...time is elastic and can be warped by gravity) is described by the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory and Theory of Evolution are two very different things.

Loki

1. Cosmic evolution- the origin of time, space and matter. Big Bang.


2. Chemical evolution- the origin of higher elements from hydrogen.

3. Stellar and planetary evolution- Origin of stars and planets.

4. Organic evolution- Origin of life from inanimate matter.

5. Macroevolution- Origin of major kinds.

6. Microevolution Variations within kinds- Only this one has been observed, the first five are religious. They are believed, by faith, even though there is no empirical evidence to prove them in any way. While I admire the great faith of the evolutionists who accept the first five I object to having this religious propaganda included in with legitimate science at taxpayer’s expense.

When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:

Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.

Planets and stars formed from space dust.

Matter created life by itself.

Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.

Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

[Adelheid]

Loki,

Nowhere in the Bible is written that the earth is flat.

[Jesuswillcome]

Chaotic stasis!(calling out across the universe's) 'somebody find us and help us PLEASE!!!!!!!!'.(TeArS)

[Stanislaw]

Most proof for and against the existence of God /creationism is a fallacy:
ad ignorantium, the appeal to ignorance:
God/creationism exists because you can't prove he doesn't and vice versa, God/creationism doesn't exist because you can't prove he does.

think about it when forming a post.

[greenburke]

[QUOTE=God/creationism exists because you can't prove he doesn't and vice versa, God/creationism doesn't exist because you can't prove he does.

think about it when forming a post[/QUOTE]


This topic is about facts supporting or denying, Creationism and Evolution.
This argument isn't about the existence of God, specifically, although implied.

You presented the existence of God, which is off topic.
You presented that fallacy, nobody on this thread has argued that way.
You negate your own post, but not the rest of ours.

Simply stated your argument and fallacy aren't relevant, it is almost narrow minded, and dismissive.

[ThatIndividual]

Greenburke, you say that when you use the term 'evolution' you are referring to the theory that those 5 phenomena take place "without God" however, those theories don't say anything about taking place "without God." They just propose natural explanations for natural phenomena, but they never say that God didn't set it in motion.

My question for you is, don't you believe that God and evolution could quite possibly co-exist?

[ThatIndividual]

Pendragon, I have a feeling that you and I are in total agreement of God and evolution -- now I see what it is you're saying.

I'm also a creationist. However, I'm a creative-evolutionist. (I just coined that term. Nice, huh?)

I know that evolution occurs. I'm quite certain that the world is more than 10,000 years old. I am also quite certain that God exists and created all of this.

There are no contradictions or inconsistancies here.

[Pendragon]

Pendragon, I have a feeling that you and I are in total agreement of God and evolution -- now I see what it is you're saying.

I'm also a creationist. However, I'm a creative-evolutionist. (I just coined that term. Nice, huh?)

I know that evolution occurs. I'm quite certain that the world is more than 10,000 years old. I am also quite certain that God exists and created all of this.

There are no contradictions or inconsistancies here.Thank you. It just occured to me, that if you can conceive a being of such power as to create all of this around us, that trying to put said being into time such as we know it is ridiculious. To such a being, time is nothing, so we have no way of saying how long this or that took. Genesis speaks of days, which we are later told are as a thousand years to God. But to the writer, a thousand years was probably unimaginable. The truth is God doesn't fit into human time. So how long did it take? I'll let the scientists try to figure that out. I still wonder about some fossil evidence, as I said, given the things that seem to never evolve, that crazy fish they thought was extinct, aligators and crocidiles, etc. And then there's that weird chimp... it's food for thought anyway. :wave:

[Miss Darcy]

Nowhere in the Bible is written that the earth is flat.

Just for clarity, Adelheid :) Loki may have :D been referring to


Isaiah 11:12
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH.

Well, nothing round has corners, does it?


Daniel 4:11
11 The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the ENDS OF ALL THE EARTH:

Perhaps this is only metaphorical??

But how about this:


Matthew 4:8
8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; (KJV)

Commentary: Astronomical bodies are spherical, and you cannot see the entire exterior surface from any place. The kingdoms of Egypt, China, Greece, Crete, sections of Asia Minor, India, Maya (in Mexico), Carthage (North Africa), Rome (Italy), Korea, and other settlements from these kingdoms of the world were widely distributed.

Therefore the Christian Bible implies the earth is flat.
Well it's not really surprising, seeing as the Bible was written such a long time ago; this was the school of thought they had back then, and thus we have it preserved.


He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. (From the NIV Bible, Psalm 104:5)

The famous line (or one of them) that got poor old Galileo into trouble. The Catholic Church only formally forgave him in 1992.

Just my little bit of silver.

;)

Darcy

[greenburke]

Quote:
"He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." (From the NIV Bible, Psalm 104:5)
Flat earth? Just beacuase it's set on foundations? Just beacause it can never be moved from these foundations?

I've heard the expression for corners, that never made me think the earth was flat. Although it is a powerful expression, a daunting image. Ends of the earth, powerful expression as well. Moving along...


I like Psalms.

Quote:
Psalms 103 vs.11 and 12

"11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;

12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us."

"As far as the east is from the west," pretty far, immposibly far if the earth is round, beacause east and west don't meet up. South and north meet, but not east and west.

I like the Book of Job too.

Quote:
Job 26 vs.6 and 7

"6 Death is naked before God;
Destruction lies uncovered.

7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing."

Wait, so the earth has foundations and it suspends over nothing!
East and West don't meet?
Sounds like a globe to me.

[greenburke]

Greenburke, you say that when you use the term 'evolution' you are referring to the theory that those 5 phenomena take place "without God" however, those theories don't say anything about taking place "without God." They just propose natural explanations for natural phenomena, but they never say that God didn't set it in motion.

My question for you is, don't you believe that God and evolution could quite possibly co-exist?


Either man brought death into the world (creation, fall, death),
or death brought man into the world (evolution).

Besides why would a perfect God, use such a ridiculous method when he could speak everything into being, and breath life into a pile of dirt.
Man is made in God's image, not monkeys.

...more on this when I'm less sleepy.

[Satirical]

Sounds like your examples, are you grasping at metaphoric straws. At least she gave the "mountain top" example.

[Miss Darcy]

Quote:
"He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." (From the NIV Bible, Psalm 104:5)
Flat earth? Just beacuase it's set on foundations? Just beacause it can never be moved from these foundations?

Sorry for being ambiguous, but I wasn't talking about a flat earth here, only about an "immoveable" one. And we all know the earth rotates on its axis and orbits the sun, don't we. So either God was being highly metaphorical or just plainly didn't have his science right.


I've heard the expression for corners, that never made me think the earth was flat.

Are you implying that God was being metaphorical again?

Darcy

[greenburke]

Say I'm some weirdo, easy enough.
And I supperglue cats to couchs.
And I tell you in prose,

"The cat sits on the couch, it can never be moved."

You gawk at what I said,
When suddenly, from around the corner, comes a couch on wheels,
ZOOMING past us at 50 miles an hour. Sure enough, there's a cat superglued to the couch.

You say to me, "I thought you said that cat could never be moved!"

I say,
"I did, that cat can't move. But that couch sure hauls asss."

-----------------------------
So what if the eath's stuck on foundations (the earth we all live on rests on a matle and core), that doesn't mean this planet isn't hurtling through space,
suspended over nothing.



By the way the KJV words it differently.

Psalm 104:5 KJV
"Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever."

[Satirical]

Modern Hebrew
יסד־ארץ על־מכוניה
בל־תמוט עולם ועד׃


Hebrew Transliterated
104:5 YSD-'aUrTSh 'yL-MKVNYH BL-ThMVT 'yVLM V'yD.


Latin Vulgate
104:5 qui fundasti terram super basem suam non commovebitur in saeculum et in saeculum


King James Version
104:5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.


American Standard Version
104:5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, That it should not be moved for ever.


Bible in Basic English
104:5 He has made the earth strong on its bases, so that it may not be moved for ever and ever;


Darby's English Translation
104:5 He laid the earth upon its foundations: it shall not be removed for ever.


Douay Rheims Bible
104:5 Who hast founded the earth upon its own bases: it shall not be moved for ever and ever.


Noah Webster Bible
104:5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.


World English Bible
104:5 He laid the foundations of the earth, That it should not be moved forever.


Young's Literal Translation
104:5 He hath founded earth on its bases, It is not moved to the age and for ever.

[Satirical]

Oh, and you must work on your prose, everyone knows that cats and couches don't mix. In fact, couches revolve around cats, the whole universe does!

Psalms 92: "He has made the CAT firm, not to be moved."
Psalms 103: "You fixed the CAT upon its foundation, not to be moved forever."
And how about in Joshua 10:12: "Then spake Joshua to Jehovah in the day when Jehovah delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, COUCH, stand thou still upon Gibeon."

Luther used to write against Galileo using this argument, I believe.

[greenburke]

Yess, the famous cat and couch.

The earth is resting on foundations (crust, matle, core).
None of these (crust, mantle core) move around the universe by themself, but as a globe, as a whole.

So the earth does rest on a foundation, and it shall never move, be removed.


And the KJV came out in 1611, the time when your arguement would be more valid, and the NIV came out when everybody knew the earth moved. "Removed" (KJV), "moved" (NIV).

Cat's superglued to couches, yes indeed.

[Satirical]

Those straws are getting shorter, eh?

[greenburke]

Naw,
how bout you show me when the earth ever moved off it's foundation.
Your holding the short straw.

[Loki]

The basis on which something stands or is supported; a base.

Sorry, but on what does the Earth stand? Around its own core, I suppose you'll say. But what about the part,

"cannot be moved"?

That does not necessarily imply it doesn't move from its "foundations" as "God" calls it. From what I see "He" meant cannot be moved whatsoever.

Words, words, words.

Or we could say, concepts, concepts, concepts. Did the Christian god ever realise that words and concepts are not the real thing? That a book of words can never be a sampling of the divine?

[Loki]

Foundation: the basis on which something stands or is supported; a base.

Sorry, but on what does the Earth stand? Around its own core, I suppose you'll say. But what about the part,

"cannot be moved"?

That does not necessarily imply it doesn't move from its "foundations" as "God" calls it. From what I see "He" meant cannot be moved whatsoever.

Words, words, words.

Or we could say, concepts, concepts, concepts. Did the Christian god ever realise that words and concepts are not the real thing? That a book of words can never be a sampling of the divine?

[Pendragon]

Back to "the four corners of the Earth" being evidence that The Bible teaches that the world is flat, remember these people were noted for their ability as sailors. They navigated by the stars, since things such as compasses and sextants were yet to be invented. But they knew there were four basic directions. Even we today, knowing full well that the Earth is round and that it goes around the Sun and spins on its axis tend to devide the world into those four basic directions: North, South, East, and West, the major points of the compass. But since the Earth is round, exactly where does North end and South begin? At the Equator, an imaginary line around the center of the Earth. Where does East become West? There's the Prime Meridian another imaginarly line from North to South. Unable to see the whole globe (remember the America's were undiscovered), we may perhaps excuse the lessened view of the world. But since anyone at the ocean's edge can, if they look, see the curve of the Earth, I don't really buy the flat Earth theory. People interpeted it that way, of course, and perscuted anyone who had enough sense to disagee. But it didn't mean that was what it said or meant.

[Adelheid]

you should visit this website: www.trueorigin.org

[Taliesin]

This is a good one too: http://www.venganza.org



We just couldn't resist. Sorry.

[Adelheid]

well, at LEAST we have the truth being heard in the schools, so that whatever decision the kids make to choose their belief, it will be with the whole picture. Else they will be biased. I should like it that way rather than the way it is NOW.

:lol: People just don't buy the alien thing...... say what you will ;)

[Loki]

On the same line of...links...I'd like to add:

http://www.churchofvirus.org/

Wonderful website. ;)

[Pendragon]

well, at LEAST we have the truth being heard in the schools, so that whatever decision the kids make to choose their belief, it will be with the whole picture. Else they will be biased. I should like it that way rather than the way it is NOW.

:lol: People just don't buy the alien thing...... say what you will ;)Adelheid, as you know, I strongly support God creating the world and believe the Bible. Yet I'm going to say something here that I hope doesn't shake your faith in me. I think it a shame that our churches have become so lax in their teaching of the Bible that children would have to depend on school to tell them that God created the world. When I was a kid, I was desperately poor, from the "wrong side of town", yet my siblings and I attended Bible school every summer at one of the biggest Baptist Churches in town, when mostly rich people were members. Then, Bible School lasted six weeks, was an all-day activity, and we were taught the Bible. My ability to name all books of the Bible in order comes from back then, as does a lot of scripture I can quote by heart. Now, no one has that kind of time to invest in young people. Some that have come here have told me that their youth pastor was more interested in teaching them to play rock guitar than anything else. Always young people would seek me out, because I would make time for them. That's what is sad. I learned about God creating the world in church, and church school in the summer. The church is failing to do its job. Realisticly, I don't think the private sector is going to do it for them either willingly or acurately.http://www.smileyville.net/mellow/mf_pope.gifhttp://www.smileyville.net/mellow/mf_unclesmile.gif

[Adelheid]

no, no!!!!

I perfectly agree with you, Pen, and it has won even more admiration. :nod: I think you are right about the church not teaching the kids that sort of thing enough, that is why I am always grateful to the Lord for bringing us and directing us to a church (even though it is small) that upholds the Bible, and believes in it as the Inspired Word of God.

Nowadays, the churches (at least the big ones) [I am not referring to ALL the churches] are more interested in gaining all the members they can get, no matter what they have to do or teach... I believe that is wrong. Pastors or ministers should only teach what is right and Biblical. Also, the music in Church is so wrong! Music is supposed to be harmonious and melodious, to bring the people of God into worship. Yet... how can one worship with rock music making you deaf???? The spirit of the World has got into the churches, and I'm getting very worried. Surely this is another sign of the End Times. There will be a great falling away before Christ comes.

I agree with you. :nod:

[emily655321]

Also, the music in Church is so wrong! Music is supposed to be harmonious and melodious, to bring the people of God into worship. Yet... how can one worship with rock music making you deaf????
I've seen this stuff on TV. If you'd like to take it as an upside, it isn't very good rock. :p

[ChuckBukowski]

Pendragon, I agree that the early indoctrination of youth into a certain school of thought or ideology more thoroughly cements their opinions and ideas. Thats why I wish public schools would teach evolutionary theory at an earlier age, preferrably at the elementary level. If we learned anything from the Nazi Party's Hitler Youth Program and the Big Brother Youth League from George Orwells's "1984", its that children, not adults, are fundamental in establishing the foundation for a system of beliefs predicated on ingnoring things we do not understand rather than questioning the unknown and upsetting the status quo.

[ChuckBukowski]

Oh, and yes I am a proud member of http://www.landoverbaptist.org/

[emily655321]

Oh, and yes I am a proud member of http://www.landoverbaptist.org/
That is...rather funny. :lol: I dig the Jesus thong. But perhaps this isn't the best forum for posting satire. :confused:

[Satirical]

Satire.....where?

[greenburke]

something to agree on, Contemporary Christian music.... gag me!

[Pendragon]

I would like to return all the way back here to what was post #670
Is it possible that you failed to catch the part where I said that the problem seems to lie with the fact that philosophers and scientists can't accept the Biblical records as written? And if we go even further back you will find that I believe in Evolution, the type known as adaptation of species to environment, which causes changes. But my faith in God as the Creator remains unshaken. I will admit that the age of the Earth and the animals remains a mystery, and that since time itself means nothing to God, the time measurements in Genesis are arbitrary. One thing that struck me recently though, was the National Geographic Special on the chimpanze that had always walked upright like a man. His head was also shaped differently. Science began to wonder if he were perhaps a crossbreed. DNA proved he was a chimp, but had an extra chromozone. His face and head reminded me a lot of the "Lucy" being. He was that one in a million chance that is possible, but not probable. Still, he existed, and they have pictures, film footage, his DNA, and his skeleton for proof. But it makes me wonder about some fossil evidence where they only have 1 skull or so. Do they really have a complete species, or is it that same one in a million chance repeated? As you may notice, I ask a question based on scientific reaserch here. It was never even discussed. Had I based the question on the Bible, I believe the expression "the fur would have flown" would fit the bill very well. Later I asked about the coelacanth, thought extinct for millions of years yet alive and virtually unchaged, and why evolution seems to have skipped aligators and crocidiles. Again no answer. Be ready at anytime to answer those who question, even if you must say an honest "I don't know. Let me do some research." Otherwise, it appears that you do the same thing you accuse the religious people of doing--ignore what doesn't fit. :)

[ChuckBukowski]

Not every species evolves, species will only evolve when they need to. Modern alligators and crocodiles are much the same as they were millions of years ago because they are able to function quite well in their environments. Also, species dont necessarily evolve drastically. Its like the finches Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, most looked exactly the same except for small variations in the beak structures which enabled one species to better catch insects and another to better crunch seeds. The coelacanth was obviously able to survive in its environment but not necessarily thrive. Conditions for evolution have to be stable for very long periods of time with subtle changes in the environment. Exceptions are organisms that breed at an extremely high rate such as virus, bacteria, dandelions etc. Lucy was a different species. A chimpanzee will never evolve into a human being no matter how long you give it becasue it is a different species. We did not evolve from monkeys, we are our own separate species. It sounds like that chimp you were referring to was the result of a mutation, having an extra or not enough chromosones.

[starrwriter]

Conditions for evolution have to be stable for very long periods of time with subtle changes in the environment ...
Recently-uncovered evidence shows there are two kinds of evolution: slow evolution that takes place over a long period of time and evolutionary leaps in an extremely short time. One example of an evolutionary leap was the increase of human brain size and the consequent development of sophisticated tools, art and language. This occurred about the time of a near-extinction event caused by rapid climate change in Africa 200,000 years ago and eventually led to waves of migration to the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

[Pendragon]

Not every species evolves, species will only evolve when they need to. Modern alligators and crocodiles are much the same as they were millions of years ago because they are able to function quite well in their environments. Also, species dont necessarily evolve drastically. Its like the finches Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, most looked exactly the same except for small variations in the beak structures which enabled one species to better catch insects and another to better crunch seeds. The coelacanth was obviously able to survive in its environment but not necessarily thrive. Conditions for evolution have to be stable for very long periods of time with subtle changes in the environment. Exceptions are organisms that breed at an extremely high rate such as virus, bacteria, dandelions etc. Lucy was a different species. A chimpanzee will never evolve into a human being no matter how long you give it becasue it is a different species. We did not evolve from monkeys, we are our own separate species. It sounds like that chimp you were referring to was the result of a mutation, having an extra or not enough chromosones.Thank you, Chuck. You have confirmed the point I've been trying in my feeble way to say. Species don't evolve into other species. But each species evolves in order to adapt to changes in environment. This is survival of the fittest, and why there are different kinds of the same species, the old "different strokes for different folks." :) Yeah, as I said, the chimp was tested and found to have an extra chromosone, that one in a million, possible, but not probable.

[rhei_27]

evolution or creation? I was raised to believe on creation rather than evolution. My parents disagree with the evolution theory. I have to admit that evolution is a plausible theory. Besides, do you really believe that we came from apes...that we originated from them. We may have some resemblance but it is not enough. Another thing, where did those apes came from? Now, Creation comes in...
I have a firm stand on creation...

[starrwriter]

...do you really believe that we came from apes...that we originated from them. We may have some resemblance but it is not enough. Another thing, where did those apes came from?
Why don't you creationists read a book on evolution theory so you'll understand what you are against?

Evolution does NOT teach that humans evolved from apes. Humans and great apes came from a common ancestor that is long extinct. We are one branch of the anthropoid family tree, great apes are another branch.

Now a question for you. If God made man in his own image, how come so many people are ugly?

[Nanci Rubin]

As a Christian I believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, and in the book of Beginning's it is written, In the beginning God (prepared, formed, fashioned, and) created the heavens and the earth. Gen.1:1 (Amp) Even as a child when I was taught Evolution in school, I never in my spirit believed it, it just seemed too far a leap in faith.

[ChuckBukowski]

A far leap in faith!?!? Are you kidding me? Believing in the Bible and that God created the earth in a seven day period after which he created Adam and all the animals, then used one of Adams ribs to make him a girlfriend but later sentenced them to eternal damnation fro eating an apple that was offered to them by a talking snake is the ultimate definition of "a far leap in faith". The only thing that creationists can offer as proof to their argument is "faith". Evolution is supported by facts. If you could show me just one talking snake I would at the very least describe the "evolution vs creation" argument as a "debate", but as far as I'm concerned it's like trying to describe what a sunset looks like to Helen Keller, no matter what you say, she's just never gonna really get it because she's too freegin blind.

[starrwriter]

As a Christian I believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, and in the book of Beginning's it is written, In the beginning God (prepared, formed, fashioned, and) created the heavens and the earth. Gen.1:1 (Amp) Even as a child when I was taught Evolution in school, I never in my spirit believed it, it just seemed too far a leap in faith.
As Chuck indicated in his frenzy, there is no faith involved in evolution. It's based on the scientific method which uses observable data and logic to test the validity of a theory. This (not faith) is the best way ever invented to separate true facts from illusions.

[imaditzyreader]

HMPH. i just wrote an essay about this in school today. I firmly belive in evolution, but i belive that God could have had a hand in it (intellegent design), but i think that it is hard to not look at all of the evidence that is put out there by the evolutionists. A book that i liked on this topic was "Confessing a Murder" Nicholas Drayson. iIt opened my eyes to how the world worked. i thought it pressed some very valid points. I also really like the view expressed by Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind" (a play about the scopes-monkey trial, whos author i cannot find at the moment). He said that as there was no sun or moon the first day(s?) of the world, how could we be sure that it was a 24 hour day. why couldnt it have been 25 hours, two weeks, ten years, or a few million years?? and in this time it could have been enough for evolution, so in essence both could be correct.

Think about it

[Pendragon]

Why don't you creationists read a book on evolution theory so you'll understand what you are against?

Evolution does NOT teach that humans evolved from apes. Humans and great apes came from a common ancestor that is long extinct. We are one branch of the anthropoid family tree, great apes are another branch.

Now a question for you. If God made man in his own image, how come so many people are ugly?I believe in both creation and evolution and see not conflict as I have often stated. Creation for a beginning and evolution from there on. I have read Darwin and said long ago in this thread that evolution speaks of a common ancestor not man from ape.

Now with that in mind, right back at you: Since God created man in His own image, why do we not all look alike? Because God is a spirit. That part of us does all look alike. These bodies? "Formed from the dust of the Earth" spirit placed inside. Evolution could have given us four arms by now, if it really worked on "see a need, fill it." I mean, who among us hasn't wished they had an extra hand or pair of hands when doing their job? Come in handy, wouldn't it? Why are so many people ugly? Well, a wise man said once that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe to someone else's eyes they aren't THAT ugly! :D :lol:

[Taliesin]

evolution or creation? I was raised to believe on creation rather than evolution. My parents disagree with the evolution theory. I have to admit that evolution is a plausible theory. Besides, do you really believe that we came from apes...that we originated from them. We may have some resemblance but it is not enough. Another thing, where did those apes came from? Now, Creation comes in...
I have a firm stand on creation...

Another thing, if God made humans, where did God come from?

[Basil]

Another thing, if God made humans, where did God come from?
From the apes?

[Adelheid]

God was always there, and is there, and always will be there. He existed, exists, and will exist. He is Omnipresence, Omniscience.

[atiguhya padma]

<Evolution could have given us four arms by now, if it really worked on "see a need, fill it.">

Having four arms would make us clumsy and inefficient.

<God was always there, and is there, and always will be there. He existed, exists, and will exist. He is Omnipresence, Omniscience.>

Your language makes no sense. How can you use 'was','is' and 'always' when god is supposedly outside time? How can you say god was here or there, when god is supposedly non-corporeal? Omnipresence leaves no room for other presence - can two things occupy the exact same space? And how can god be present anywhere without having a body? To be present, is to physically occupy a spatial area, is it not? Is god present in my blood? in my urine? in my faeces? Was god present in Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot?

[greenburke]

Why don't you creationists read a book on evolution theory so you'll understand what you are against?

Evolution does NOT teach that humans evolved from apes. Humans and great apes came from a common ancestor that is long extinct. We are one branch of the anthropoid family tree, great apes are another branch.

Now a question for you. If God made man in his own image, how come so many people are ugly?


"Darwin made a keen observation but he drew a poor conclusion.
He thought that since natural selection can and does produce slight variations within animal populations it should therefore be able to explain all of the variety we observe in biology.

He concluded that since natural selection explains variety, all life must somehow be related, everything ultimately having evolved from some sort of common ancestor.

"It is a truly wonderful fact-the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity-that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other…" [Origin of Species]

Darwinists have even gone so far as to suggest that this common ancestor somehow evolved from non-living matter (which they presume to be some kind of dirty-water soup-like composition). Well, this whole idea of the birds and bananas, the fish and the flowers, all being related, and life evolving from non-life… may have seemed remotely plausible back in the 1800s.

Modern biology was still in its infancy and the living cell was still thought to be nothing more than a simple blob of protoplasm. Gregor Mendell (1822-1884) had only just begun exploring the principles of heredity and it wasn't until the late 1850's that Luis Pasteur (1822-1895) sought to disprove the abiogenesis fallacy

...and in light of the tremendous advances we've made in molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics, especially over these past fifty years, the flaws in Darwin's theory standout quite clearly.

For example, we've established that genetic barriers exist. Pigs will never fly! Yes, there are degrees of variation.

Different skin tones, facial features, eyes colors, hair types, etc. You could have a big dog or a small dog, a dog with long or short hair.

But no kind of dog will ever produce a non-dog! Birds and bananas aren't distant cousins! As far as life arising from non-life (abiogenesis), the mechanisms are fairly well known and the bottom line is this: certain chemical constraints make abiogenesis an impossible event."

http://www.allaboutscience.org/origin-of-species.htm



p.s. God is spirit, when he made man in his likeness he gave him a living soul.

People are to blame for "ugly" people. Eating the forbidden fruit brought sin, death, and disease into our world.

[greenburke]

Another thing, if God made humans, where did God come from?

If primordial soup made humans, where did primordial soup come from?

Oh that's right, when nothing exploded and made the universe.

Course it was BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO so that must be observable and studiable... I call it a fairytale.

[greenburke]

A far leap in faith!?!? Are you kidding me? Believing in the Bible and that God created the earth in a seven day period after which he created Adam and all the animals, then used one of Adams ribs to make him a girlfriend but later sentenced them to eternal damnation fro eating an apple that was offered to them by a talking snake is the ultimate definition of "a far leap in faith". The only thing that creationists can offer as proof to their argument is "faith". Evolution is supported by facts. If you could show me just one talking snake I would at the very least describe the "evolution vs creation" argument as a "debate", but as far as I'm concerned it's like trying to describe what a sunset looks like to Helen Keller, no matter what you say, she's just never gonna really get it because she's too freegin blind.

Hellen Keller? Was she an evolutionist?

Facts... like the fact that our observable universe blew up from nothing?

Or that life arose from non-life?

How bout benificial mutations.

Or that animals suddenly evovled over a in one generation? Like a snake hatching a baby bird?

Wait never seen any of those.

How bout finches off the coast of south America, or central or wherever adapting to the enviroment?
Yah that one's scientific.

Cosmic, stellar, chemical, life from no life, changing from species to another? Those aren't observable.

Adaptation is observable, course all the information's pre-packaged.

Evoulionists need faith to believe in....
. Cosmic evolution- the origin of time, space and matter. Big Bang.
2. Chemical evolution- the origin of higher elements from hydrogen.
3. Stellar and planetary evolution- Origin of stars and planets.
4. Organic evolution- Origin of life from inanimate matter.
5. Macroevolution- Origin of major kinds.

The only factual one is this...
6. Microevolution Variations within kinds- Only this one has been observed, the first five are religious. They are believed, by faith, even though there is no empirical evidence to prove them in any way. While I admire the great faith of the evolutionists who accept the first five I object to having this religious propaganda included in with legitimate science at taxpayer’s expense.


Ummm.. if you are an evolutionist and don't believe in the first five, where's your faith man?

[greenburke]

As Chuck indicated in his frenzy, there is no faith involved in evolution. It's based on the scientific method which uses observable data and logic to test the validity of a theory. This (not faith) is the best way ever invented to separate true facts from illusions.


The best way ever?

Are you defending the theory that nothing exploded billions of years ago?

Or just the theory that you descended from cooling lava?

Or the theory that "everthing in time and space is related"-Charles Darwin

Are you using a thought through, fact based arguement to say everything came from chance?
Well then, your chance made brain is probably spewing accidents, not arguements.

[greenburke]

HMPH. i just wrote an essay about this in school today. I firmly belive in evolution, but i belive that God could have had a hand in it (intellegent design), but i think that it is hard to not look at all of the evidence that is put out there by the evolutionists. A book that i liked on this topic was "Confessing a Murder" Nicholas Drayson. iIt opened my eyes to how the world worked. i thought it pressed some very valid points. I also really like the view expressed by Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind" (a play about the scopes-monkey trial, whos author i cannot find at the moment). He said that as there was no sun or moon the first day(s?) of the world, how could we be sure that it was a 24 hour day. why couldnt it have been 25 hours, two weeks, ten years, or a few million years?? and in this time it could have been enough for evolution, so in essence both could be correct.

Think about it


what facts to support evolution?

[greenburke]

<Evolution could have given us four arms by now, if it really worked on "see a need, fill it.">

Having four arms would make us clumsy and inefficient.

<God was always there, and is there, and always will be there. He existed, exists, and will exist. He is Omnipresence, Omniscience.>

Your language makes no sense. How can you use 'was','is' and 'always' when god is supposedly outside time? How can you say god was here or there, when god is supposedly non-corporeal? Omnipresence leaves no room for other presence - can two things occupy the exact same space? And how can god be present anywhere without having a body? To be present, is to physically occupy a spatial area, is it not? Is god present in my blood? in my urine? in my faeces? Was god present in Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot?


God is evrywhere, look up the word transcendent, it should help.

"To be present, is to physically occupy a spatial area, is it not?"

Come on, try air, space, wind, shadow, light, darkness, ideas, promises, memories... other stuff.

Does something have to have a body to exist?


When nothing exploded and made the universe, did that nothing have a body?

[Pendragon]

Having four arms would make us clumsy and inefficient.

Really? Think about it the next time you have your hands full and have to do anything from answering a phone to holding a flashlight to see the insides of a computer while you delicately solder wires that you also could use another hand to hold, but the solder gun's in one, one wire's in the other and the flashlight is in your mouth and you are proping the other wire up with a popcicle stick. Sounds real efficient and deft to me. But now a monkey, who doesn't have to do this type of task, would have extra hands AND a prehensile tail! Maybe I could get him to help me with my tasks, he's got more hands than I do! :lol: :lol: :lol:

[atiguhya padma]

<People are to blame for "ugly" people. Eating the forbidden fruit brought sin, death, and disease into our world.>

Creating the forbidden fruit when the omniscient god knew it would be eaten was even uglier.

[atiguhya padma]

<God is evrywhere, look up the word transcendent, it should help>

I've looked up the word transcendent. It would only help someone like you. Read Wittgenstein. It should help.

<Come on, try air, space, wind, shadow, light, darkness, ideas, promises, memories... other stuff.>

I think you need to look up the term present. If something is present, it is present somewhere. If something is present somewhere, then only that something is present precisely there. Do you think you can occupy exactly the same space that someone else does?

How can space occupy space? What on earth are you talking about? Light and darkness are not occupational presences. Where do ideas have a presence? Ideas are states. Does sadness have a presence? It makes no sense to talk of states of being as presences. And as for promises??? They occupy space???

You rant on about observation as evidence: what observational evidence do you have for god?

[atiguhya padma]

<Come on, try air, space, wind, shadow, light, darkness, ideas, promises, memories... other stuff.>

Do you think that air is not physical? Do you think that all of the above can exist without physicality? Ever seen an idea promise or memory that never had a relation to something physical? light and darkness are physical. Shadows are dependent upon light and bodies. Wind is a physical manifestation.

[greenburke]

<People are to blame for "ugly" people. Eating the forbidden fruit brought sin, death, and disease into our world.>

Creating the forbidden fruit when the omniscient god knew it would be eaten was even uglier.

This omnscient God, gave man his/her own freewill, freedom to choose.


"...but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn
On Man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured."

-Milton

[greenburke]

<God is evrywhere, look up the word transcendent, it should help>

I've looked up the word transcendent. It would only help someone like you. Read Wittgenstein. It should help.

<Come on, try air, space, wind, shadow, light, darkness, ideas, promises, memories... other stuff.>

I think you need to look up the term present. If something is present, it is present somewhere. If something is present somewhere, then only that something is present precisely there. Do you think you can occupy exactly the same space that someone else does?

How can space occupy space? What on earth are you talking about? Light and darkness are not occupational presences. Where do ideas have a presence? Ideas are states. Does sadness have a presence? It makes no sense to talk of states of being as presences. And as for promises??? They occupy space???

You rant on about observation as evidence: what observational evidence do you have for god?


I'm sorry, I misunderstood you, when you said, "And how can god be present anywhere without having a body?"
I listed off present things w/out a body.

I did not mean that God was present physically like the wind or light.
Rather that God made wind and light, that God transcends (To exist above and independent of material experience or the universe) his own creation, and that God is indeed Spirit.


When You said, "And how can god be present anywhere without having a body? To be present, is to physically occupy a spatial area, is it not? Is god present in my blood? in my urine? in my faeces? Was god present in Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot?"

I did not reply that God was physically present, only that there are physical manifestations which do not have a body, and do indeed exsist. Simply stated, matter does not need a body (much less a human body) to exist.

"...how can god be present anywhere without having a body?"
I wasn't saying that God has a body, but that physical manifestations do not need a body to exist.

[greenburke]

I've looked up the word transcendent. It would only help someone like you.

By the way when you said "someone like you", what did you mean?

African American, Norwegian, Palestinian, Iraqi, a Jew? Democrat, bald, handicapped, eplipetic, dislexic. Single, blind, male? Religous thinker, someone who believes in a god? A Shiite, a Sunni, a Hindu, a Catholic, a Protestant a Greek Orthodox, Angelican?

Did you mean one of the 2.1 billion Christian followers?
Or one of the 1.3 billion Muslim followers?
One of the 1.1 billion Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheists?
One of the 900 mollion Hindus?

Or are you just making a stereotye of people like me.

If your just calling me a jerk that's fine, but don't make discminate "people like me" based on pre-concived notions. An intellectual debate is not the place for that.

[starrwriter]

I'm assuming by someone like me you meant someone who believes in God, or a higher being. If so, you are dangerously stereotyping people like me. If your just calling me a jerk, that's OK.
I think it's an accurate description and not a stereotype. The world can be fairly divided into religious believers and non-believers.

If I were you, I wouldn't pre-emptively call myself a jerk. atiguhya padma never used that word and it doesn't help you explain your position on this topic.

[greenburke]

I apologize for pre-emptively call myself a jerk.

Still, the phrase "people like you" is a vague, often derogatory lumping of individuals.

A last-ditch character attack when facts are sparse. Used by people like you.....

[starrwriter]

I apologize for pre-emptively call myself a jerk. Still, the phrase "people like you" is a vague, often derogatory lumping of individuals. A last-ditch character attack when facts are sparse. Used by people like you....
The facts are on atiguhya padma's side. You merely have faith.

[greenburke]

The facts are on atiguhya padma's side. You merely have faith.

Again an ad hominem fallacy falling short of it's mark. If I have faith- (Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing) -does that make my arguement weaker? Rather confident.

Atiguhya Padma's facts have faith (trust in things), and leads to more faith (in things and ideas beyond one's limited understanding).

Whether that faith manifests itself as trust in God,
or one's faith is in exploding nothingness billions and billions of years ago.
It is still faith.
Whether a faith in Truth.
Or a willfully ignorant, self-depricating nihillism.
Which would make perfect nonsense out an argument,
since arguements seek truth.
Relativistic ideas based on limited human experiences can't claim to know Truth or even be convinced of their own claims. Since one can't be convinced in not being convinced.

I say there is truth, you say there is no truth.
Why have you argued if truth isn't present?
If there's no truth then there's no room to judge.
Then "everything is lawful."- Dostoyevsky
What foundation can you argue from?

I argue from Truth.

[jamuscubed]

Didn't you here the news? God is dead, and you killed him.

What truly is more important philosophically is now. Here we are, now what? Do you often find time to argue the archaic meanings of words? Let us further examine the word dumb...When's the last time you used it to mean mute? It's irrelevant. But the origin of man should shed insight as to what we are. Isn't that one of the fundamental questions of philosophy? I'll indulge because it is rather stimulating.

So to answer. Evolution happens, not only is it a good theory (Equally good is Creationism, or intelligent design), but we have watched it happen. I've seen the arguments about truth you've had. Dostoevsky/greenburke (but you spelled his name wrong) was right, we need to draw a line. We can't answer anything if we can't agree on the terms.

Truth is empirical!

Yet we have not seen everything, here lies the argument. How do we know what we can't see or fathom. And we can't. Never can we disprove the presence of God. He is "hearsay" or omnipresent or transcendent or whatever you shall have. As a scientist there is much in research that will make you pause and wonder AND take a leap of faith to believe. So you are all right so far. Science DOES have faith. Not all lines of thinking are straight (or have a communicative property. A=B, B=C, so A must = C) so much is left to assume.

The real problem you struggle with is that with how can something be created out of nothing? The easy answer is a supreme being with powers we cannot understand. Doesn't take much rationalization to create that truth. Almost all civilizations have had gods to rationalize the inexplicable. The harder answer is science. The big bang theory does sound very plausible. To create a universe would take a lot of energy. I can barely create a sandwich without passing out. And well the Hubble space telescope has proven that the universe is expanding still. WE HAVE SEEN IT.
The hardest answer is left for only Zarathustra to understand. Possibly the universe has always been. There was never a "singularity" (A singularity proves the FAITH in science, nobody comprehends a singularity) there was always IS. And from this everything has its roots.

We are composed genetically 99.9% alike the chimpanzee. We have metabolic pathways related to bacteria. Development pathways follow a conserved sequence in many mammals. EVOLUTION EXISTS!!! All of you that don't yet believe have not yet opened your eyes. Hide behind your half truths and faith, close your eyes and go back to sleep. This thread doesn’t even have it right. The debate is Intelligent Design over Evolution. Creationism over Big Bang. Not creationism vs. evolution.

God created evolution. Morally though, you killed God. It's a shame, he was doing such a good job.

P.S. Please don't respond with rhetorical questions. Prove to me something and I'll debate, and let us not digress into morals, I was just playing around.

[greenburke]

Signet Classics says you spell it wrong...

http://www.signetclassics.com/nf/Search/QuickSearchProc/1,,dostoyevsky,00.html?id=dostoyevsky

But 'ey, potato, dostoevksy.



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Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leonard Stanton
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Book: Paperback | 4.48 x 6.69in | 560 pages | ISBN 0451527232 | 01 Feb 1999 | Signet Classic
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Notes from Underground, The Grand Inquisitor
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Garnett
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Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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[Pendragon]

I think it's an accurate description and not a stereotype. The world can be fairly divided into religious believers and non-believers.

If I were you, I wouldn't pre-emptively call myself a jerk. atiguhya padma never used that word and it doesn't help you explain your position on this topic.Thank you. Even being in the "religious believers" camp does not blind me to the fairness of your statement. That's what we have long needed. Athiguthya and I have discussed things often and if we've disagreed, which we have, I don't ever recall it breaking out into name calling, which I have pointed out before futhers neither cause. This time I used humor to dispel any sign of hard feelings and we go on. Athiguthya has (her?) opinion on evolution and I have my own because I could use that extra hand! :lol: Thanks for peace keeping duties, Star. It's often a thankless job, but it does help when forum members try to remind each other that we are here for a discussion not a brawl. Cheers! :D

[Logos]

(not directed at anyone in particular..)

Please remember to discuss ideas and not direct personal negative comments to fellow members.

[jamuscubed]

I'm sorry greenburke...
It truly wasn't my intention to start this quibble about the spelling of an authors name. In fact I was agreeing with you with your point.

Sadly my copy of crime and punishment has it spelt my way. Hence probably how I came to think it was spelled like that. This very website that we have a forum on also has it spelt like me. I am sure it was americanized, as was my last name from Italy.

Hey so we are both right, and the quote was nice.

Pendragon, the extra arms you speak of are a possibility. It happens in flys when a certain gene gets duplicated. These hox genes are similar to the genes us humans use. If a blastula during development somehow would go under a mutation that causes a duplication to one of these genes, there would be extra sets of arms. In theory because usually in the fly the whole thorax gets duplicated, so at least a double body cavity would develop in humans. I don't know if the gene is located yet, but i'm sure there is intense study looking for it, especially funded by the military.

I also would bet that there has been humans born with extra arms, (maybe how the hindus fashioned their God), but since they would be considered a freak (and probably sexually undesirable), they probably didn't breed a next generation of people with multiple arms. This is how evolution works. Genes need to be passed down from generation to generation.

[starrwriter]

Signet Classics says you spell it wrong...
http://www.signetclassics.com/nf/Search/QuickSearchProc/1,,dostoyevsky,00.html?id=dostoyevsky
But 'ey, potato, dostoevksy.
There is no "toy" in Dostoevsky. I hate that spelling and refuse to acknowledge it as legitimate.

[greenburke]

Well, Randomhouse agrees with you Mr. Writer.


Title Author Price Date Imprint Binding ISBN Buy Off the Page
The Double and The Gambler Fyodor Dostoevsky £10.99 01/09/2005 Everyman Hardback 1857152956
(9781857152951)


I didn't know there was such a contreversy over a long Russian name,
by the way does anyone else have any clue as how to pronounce all those long Russian naemes, it's been bugging me, and I don't have a Russian on hand. Besides Dostoevsky himself, Mishkin, and Raskolnikov, those are pretty elementary. The rest of the names all have like 12 letters and lots of paired consonants. (I know this is off the topic...)

[starrwriter]

...by the way does anyone else have any clue as how to pronounce all those long Russian naemes, it's been bugging me, and I don't have a Russian on hand. Besides Dostoevsky himself, Mishkin, and Raskolnikov, those are pretty elementary.
Not for me. For years I mispronounced Raskolnikov. Maybe because he was such a rascal, I put the accent on the syllable Raskol and later I discovered the correct pronunciation was Ras-kol-ni-kov with the accent on kol.

[greenburke]

.
.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s (1744-1829) concept of inheritance of acquired characteristics. In his 1809 book Philosophie zoologique, in which Lamarck declared that a giraffe got it’s long neck by stretching it up to reach the higher branches. Also, if you decided in your mind to do so you can grow hair on your bald head and your offspring will never be bald.

In 1891 August Weisman disproved the Lamarckism theory, when Weisman cut off the tails of 19 successive generations of rats and they still grew tails.
There are other obvious acquired traits that were never passed down from generation to generation.

-Hebrews have circumcised their boys for thousands of years, yet none are born uncircumcised.
-Chinese women bound the feet of their infant girls for thousands of years, yet Chinese girls are still born with normal sized feet.
-The Flat-head Indians of the Northwest United states bound the heads of their children to give them unusual shapes. After hundreds of years of this practice their babies continued to be born with normal shape heads.


Charles Darwin dropped out of medical school, and the only real degree he had was in theology which he obtained during his three years of theological studies at Christ's College, Cambridge. Yet, today he is deemed as a naturalist and scientist with no formal education in these areas.

Darwin “theorized that this process [Natural Selection] could account for changes in the characteristic traits of species over time and eventually produce wholly new species and different types of organisms.”--- ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy

Darwin wrote, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” ---Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species...," 1859, p. 162.


Darwin did admit, “In fact the belief in Natural Selection must at present be grounded entirely on general considerations… When we descend on details, we can prove that no one species has changed…nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork for the theory. Nor can we explain why some species have changed and others have not.”---- Charles Darwin, Life &Letters, Vol. 3, p. 25.

Later in life, in his 1871 book Descent of Man, Charles Darwin repudiated natural selection as hopeless and returned to Lamarckism.


Since Charles Darwin’s book only sited example that were merely changes within a species, Neo-Darwinists have picked up the pieces have picked up the pieces and have been trying to piece them together ever since.

“However, conventional Darwinian theory rationalizes most adaptations by assuming that sufficient time has transpired during evolution for natural selection to provide us with all the biological adaptations we see on earth today, but in reality the adaptive process must by necessity occur rather quickly (in one or at most two breeding generations).”--- E. Steele, Somatic Selection and Adaptive Evolution.

“So the simultaneous of two or more molecules of any given enzyme purley by chance is fantastically improbable.”---W. Thorpe, “Reductionism in Biology,” on Studies in the Philosophy of Biology

“From the probability standpoint the ordering of the present environment into a single amino acid molecule would be utterly improbable in all time and space available for the origin of terrestrial life.”---Homer Jacobson, “Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life,” American Scientist

Still scientists have hope, natural selection and mutations.
“It must not be forgotten that mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation found in natural populations and the only new material for natural selection to work upon.”--- E. Mayr, Populations, Species and Evolution

However, “The complete proof of the utilization of mutations in evolution under natural conditions has not yet been given.” Julian Huxley, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis

A mutation is damage to a single DNA unit (a gene). If it occurs in a somatic (body) gene, it only injures the individual, but if to a gametic (reproductive) gene, this damage will be passed on to its descendents.

“Although mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, it is relatively a rare event.” --- F.J. Ayala, “Mechanisms of Evolution,” Scientific American

Mutations are random, wild events that are totally uncontrollable. Evolution requires improvement, yet mutations do not help they only damage cells, weaken and injure the creature.

“A proportion of favorable mutations of one in a thousand does not sound much, but is probably generous, since so many mutations are lethal, preventing the organism from living at all, and the great majority of the rest throw the machinery slightly out of gear.” ---Julian Huxely, Evolution in Action

Hundreds of thousands of unnatural mutation experiments have been done, in the determined effort to prove the possibility of evolution by mutation. Not once has there been a recorded instance of a truly beneficial mutation (one which is a known mutation, and not merely a latent reshuffling of latent characteristics), nor such a mutation that was permanent, passing on from one generation to the next.

“Mutations are more than just sudden changes in heredity, they also affect the viability [ability to keep living], and, to the best of our knowledge invariably affect it adversely [they tend to result in harm or death]. Does not this fact show that mutations are really assaults on the organisms central being, its basic capacity to be a living thing?”
--- C.P. Martin, “A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution,” in American Scientist

“As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of being, as we see them, well defined species?” ---Charles Darwin

“Not one change of species into another is on record… we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.” ---Charles Darwin, My Life and Letters

[Noais_Dantes]

ok someone who is an evolutionist please answer these questions... If we are animals then why are we being punished for acting like animals? Why are the public schools having problems with gun fights and the such when they have been taught evolution all their lives, meaning they are just shooting another animal? Please i am at a loss as too how to understand that you can say that we are animals, but when some acts like one they get in trouble.

[Pendragon]

Pendragon, the extra arms you speak of are a possibility. It happens in flys when a certain gene gets duplicated. These hox genes are similar to the genes us humans use. If a blastula during development somehow would go under a mutation that causes a duplication to one of these genes, there would be extra sets of arms. In theory because usually in the fly the whole thorax gets duplicated, so at least a double body cavity would develop in humans. I don't know if the gene is located yet, but i'm sure there is intense study looking for it, especially funded by the military.

I also would bet that there has been humans born with extra arms, (maybe how the hindus fashioned their God), but since they would be considered a freak (and probably sexually undesirable), they probably didn't breed a next generation of people with multiple arms. This is how evolution works. Genes need to be passed down from generation to generation.I couldn't say about the research part, but yes, there is a book entitled Very Special People out there somewhere which I have read, and people have been born with extra limbs, both arms and legs. Some did, indeed, marry and have children, the gene just didn't pass on. You may recall the famous Siamese Twins Eng and Chang. They married, and had something like 22? children betwwen them and no twins of any type. It happens that way. On the other hand, I have a cousin by marriage whose 17 siblings include three sets of twins. Genetics can be funny. Still, sometimes when I have a computer torn apart I'd really like that extra hand! :lol: They make a tool for wire soldering called "extra hand" that is basically mounted alligater clips on ball joints at the ends of a short piece of pipe. I'd love to have the tool for my tool bag, but a friend here in VA was pulled over by a Trooper. I don't know whether the trooper was in a bad mood or what, but my friend, a liecened electrician, had alligater clips sticking out off his work bag and if not for other officers called to the scence would have been arrested for "drug parapanalia". So I don't take any chances. Besides, I'm disabled and do any computer repair as a favor for friends. So I definately don't need trouble. :D :lol: :lol:

[Scheherazade]

By Robert Winston

If you look carefully, you might see one of those slim, elongated boxes attached to the front doorpost of one of the houses near you. They appear on houses across the world - wherever Jews have lived.

The box contains a tightly rolled parchment on which a qualified scribe will have written Hebrew letters in special ink.

The text contains a commandment from Deuteronomy to attach a sign to all doorposts of your house. It starts with an affirmation, central to Jewish faith, of the existence of a single God.

The little box is called a mezuzah in Hebrew. My house bears such a box, and when I leave home on a workday morning, my head crammed with the usual worldly thoughts and worries, I occasionally touch it.

Simultaneously, as I am closing my front door, an elderly merchant in Tashkent, some 4,500 miles from where I live, escapes the noon heat. Wearing a white lace cap, he stretches an old, small woollen carpet on the floor in his warehouse. He slips off his sandals and prepares to recite Zuhr, the midday prayers.

Baby-making

At the same time, some 4,000 miles away in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a young woman carefully lays out some tropical fruits and flowers on a burnished metal platter.

She lights some incense sticks at a small brightly coloured box - a box that to our western eyes resembles the top of a clean bird table. She bows briefly, then stands up for a second. She bows once more.

Like me and the merchant, she has, for a few brief moments, given her mind and her body over something that was not physically present. These examples of ritualised behaviour or prayer are repeated many times over in many places and nearly all human cultures.

I am a medical scientist, who has spent his career fascinated with one of our more basic human instincts: the compulsion to reproduce. For some of my scientific colleagues, humans are mere expression of an intricate genetic programme which creates that drive to have babies.

For some scientists, this belief - and I deliberately call it that - has some consolations of religion. It attempts to make sense of every corner of existence and of our place within all that exists.

Scientists tend to build a reputation on refuting the theories of those who have gone before. Yet, whatever we hypothesize, observe, measure or record about the natural world, it leaves more unanswered questions.

Though a very superficial view might argue the contrary, science does not give us certainty about ourselves or our origin. Some ideas endured and the most enduring is the idea of a supernatural dimension to our existence. I call it the "Divine Idea".

For some people, the very fact that the "idea of God" has survived is proof enough of God's reality. But it is a simplistic theory; things survive for all sorts of random reasons.

But in any case, this is not an enquiry into the existence of God. My purpose is to tell the story of an idea, how humans approach that idea and how that idea has shaped human life.

It does not matter whether you believe there lurks a real God or gods behind the idea. The idea is real and, as a scientist who studies "real things", I believe it deserves to be examined.

Jacob's story

In the book of Genesis there is an extraordinary, puzzling episode involving Jacob and a silent man who he wrestles all night. The man leaves before dawn so that Jacob never actually sees his face.

Many English translations of the Bible call Jacob's antagonist an angel. Some Jewish sources argue he is Jacob's guardian Angel or saviour. Other suggest it is himself, his own conscience. But perhaps it is God.

Whatever the meaning of Jacob's story, it gives a powerful image for the impulse underlying what I am saying. Virtually all of us at one time or another have wrestled with God.

I think humans have always wrestled with the Divine Idea - an idea that unites and separates, creates and destroys, consoles and terrifies. Throughout human history, it is an idea that seems sometimes to have caused whole populations to rise up and slaughter one another.

It is also a kind of bond, a mode of human expression that links me, a Jew, the merchant in Tashkent and the woman in Cambodia.

All paths to the divine involve a wrestling match. Wherever God is considered, there are radically conflicting ideas. Spirituality on its own could not have been sufficient for human consciousness: we need to formalise our beliefs, to give them structure, to arrive at a frame work for the rules of living.

Religion has endured since the dawn of human consciousness precisely because it encompasses so much of being human. No idea has endured so long, gathered up so many disparate needs and wants and feelings, and inspired so many different paths towards understanding it.

In some ways, the wrestling match is typified by the apparent conflict between God and science. This dispute is largely vacuous. They are both essentially two different ways of looking at the natural world, though each gives an important insight into the other.

But we must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science. Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great good.

My book is not an exhaustive history of the struggle between science and the divine. I have compressed the story, preferring to focus on some influential religious movements and the more interesting examples from science.

I hope also that a personal account of some of my own struggles with God, and an impression of how I continue to attempt to resolve that conflict, as an averagely rational scientists and a Jew will be of some interest.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4488328.stm

[starrwriter]

If I have faith- (Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing) -does that make my arguement weaker?
Yes. Faith is an appeal to emotions, not a logical argument.


Atiguhya Padma's facts have faith (trust in things), and leads to more faith (in things and ideas beyond one's limited understanding).
As I said before, there is no faith involved in scientifically-based facts. And things exist independently of faith in them.


I say there is truth, you say there is no truth.
Why have you argued if truth isn't present?
If there's no truth then there's no room to judge.
Then "everything is lawful."- Dostoyevsky
What foundation can you argue from?
Your thinking is as confused as your memory. I never said there is no truth. I just don't agree with you that truth can be found by faith and so-called religious revelations. Logic and the scientific method are much better tools.

If you will bother to read "The Brothers Karamazov" carefully, you will see that Doestoevsky was ridiculing as nonsense the idea that everything is lawful if there is no God. The brother who uttered those words was looking for any excuse to do whatever he wanted.

[Vaultking]

someone please explain to me how evolution can explain the development of the eye. Its way too complex to be made by one freak mutation, and if one little thing goes wrong, then the eye becomes a completely useless mass of flesh.

[emily655321]

"But we must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science. Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great good."
I like this. That sounds like a really interesting book.


Its way too complex to be made by one freak mutation
That's your opinion. In fact, it was millions and millions and millions of freak mutations.


ok someone who is an evolutionist please answer these questions... If we are animals then why are we being punished for acting like animals? Why are the public schools having problems with gun fights and the such when they have been taught evolution all their lives, meaning they are just shooting another animal? Please i am at a loss as too how to understand that you can say that we are animals, but when some acts like one they get in trouble.
Well, first, as an opponent of hunting for sport, I would take issue with anyone shooting an animal. :p Your argument seems to be rooted in the supposition that the life of an animal is not as important as that of a human being. I, who, even as a religious child, was always taught that human beings are a kind of animal, see no reason why that should make their lives less valuable. I see it as an unfortunate side-affect of the belief in Creationism, that some people view human beings as vastly superior to other kinds of animals, and therefore, when introduced to the idea that humans are also animals, are offended based on their belief that "animal" is an inherently negative term. If all living creatures are animals, then animals can't be "worse" than another form of creature, can they, being that there's only one? Unless you choose to believe that plants are superior to us.

But, secondly, I have to return to the point that has been made time and again in this thread: Why should the hypothetical truth of evolution/falseness of God negate the the importance of moral action? I understand, I think, the point that you're trying to make; that if morality is a God-given trait, and violence is a natural, or animalistic, trait, then the removal of God should leave no argument against our naturally violent tendencies. I would point out a common flaw of such reasoning, as I suggested earlier: you attribute morality and other "civilized" traits to religion alone, and assume that those who don't credit God with giving them to us would also reject the ideas themselves. Well, there are certainly *violent and cruel people on this earth who like to reject them to excuse their actions, but most people, religious or not, don't. I think that moral ideas are inherent to the human brain, then got attributed to God with the advent of religion. People who don't believe in God still believe in acting morally (*with the noted exceptions, which occur within the religious population as well). Being an animal doesn't mean being stupid. Human beings are intelligent, emotional animals, with an advanced notion of how to keep peace within their social circles, which often involves suppressing our more primative violent tendencies. Not shooting each other isn't a religious idea; it's a human idea. Although, there is mounting evidence that we may not be alone in that:

An old BBC article addressing animal sentience (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3014747.stm)
A cool, cool website about animal sentience (http://www.animalsentience.com/whatis_sentience.htm)
A Cool Social Morality Quiz (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/morals/index.shtml)

[starrwriter]

someone please explain to me how evolution can explain the development of the eye. Its way too complex to be made by one freak mutation, and if one little thing goes wrong, then the eye becomes a completely useless mass of flesh.
If I recall an experiment correctly, scientists were able to make one eye of a simple animal grow on its foot instead of its head by tampering with its genes.

Genetics is a very complicated science. Humans have something like 130,000 genes and it was recently discovered that each gene has more than one function.

Don't forget that evolution is driven by natural selection as well as random (genetic) mutation. There is nothing "freakish" about the whole process.