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Hi AP, I believe I have given you my answer to your question "why is Genesis structured the way it is" once before. I have given it elsewhere so many times that I am beginning to realize nobody really cares. My final question is, "Why?" Is it not interesting? Has it been proven (on historical grounds) wrong? Does it contradict anything else in the Bible? clb Connor, I read your interpretation. If you are sore that I didn't jump on your bandwagon I am not sure what to say to you. I went with a similar approach for a while, I am looking for something a bit more robust. I am not sore; only confused. To say something is weak (or not robust enough) is to say one sees flaws in that something. I merely wish to know what those flaws are in my interpretation. Simply give me one flaw and I'll shut up about it. You can think of it as charity--for I certainly do not want to endorse an interpretation that can't hold water. clb If I wanted to engage you in that discussion, wouldn't I have done it in the thread in which you brought it up? I'm confused as to why you are dragging this here. Connor, may i suggest that this may be better hashed out in PM if you think it needs more discussion?

Yeah. I think the issue is, you are assuming naturalism, if even for a moment, to do it. Then, you see how well it all works out, how powerful the predictions are, how well we can control the world thinking like that. For me, at any rate, it's hard not to exist in tension between this implicit 'success' of science, associate that with naturalism, vs the more 'unpredictable' nature of spiritual encounters with God.

I get the sense from some people , who are not scientifically inclined, they think that while science is fine and all what's the point in dragging it into faith matters? Isn't the gospel simple? Why does it matter if evolution is true or not, why worry about it? Why does it matter if the universe is 14.5 billion years old or 10k yrs old? What does that affect anyway? There's a point there sure. But, my opponents (the YEC who debate in this subforum) have a point also, and it's this, as I understand it. Science informs what we think is *really* true about the world. If there is a lot of scientific evidence that being exposed to plutonium causes cancer, I will avoid it. If there is a lot of scientific evidence that t he earth is round, that it goes around the sun, and that the sun is a star in the Milky Way, I will see the world that way now. That is, science is such a powerful tool for informing us about how the physical world works, it can inform the worldviews we have powerfully. Ignoring that is perhaps naive. More than that, for people who are more scientifically inclined this effect is more powerful. This, ultimately, is about what we think is true about the world, and perhaps what the default 'truth' is. When I want to know what is 'really real' where do I turn? If I had to put my future income on the line? my family? At the risk of exposing myself, I admit, I have struggled with this sort of thing. I instinctually believe 'the science'. I am challenged to have faith and see the 'greater' reality, the real reality, as being in God. For many of us, there is a tension there. I doesn't have to be that way, but it is. I have personally been convicted of having less faith while engaging in research. There are things happening that way I don't even really understand yet, which is for me a reason I engage in these discussions at all. This isn't just about being curious about the world, or enjoying science as some hobby or career choice. At issue is a fundamental approach to the world. And insofar as I am correct in understanding the YEC crowd, I think they are correct about that.

I disagree. I could import what I wrote about this in your thread if need be. 'Rarely observed' is all that evolution needs to explain the diversity of life on the earth today. Yes, phylogenetic tree construction and as far as genetic stuff goes, ERVs.

Hi AP, I believe I have given you my answer to your question "why is Genesis structured the way it is" once before. I have given it elsewhere so many times that I am beginning to realize nobody really cares. My final question is, "Why?" Is it not interesting? Has it been proven (on historical grounds) wrong? Does it contradict anything else in the Bible? clb Connor, I read your interpretation. If you are sore that I didn't jump on your bandwagon I am not sure what to say to you. I went with a similar approach for a while, I am looking for something a bit more robust.

Sure. I think what some people miss though is that these are arenas by which the gospel is fought. If you go into a place, among people, for whom belief in God is considered idiotic, let alone belief in Jesus as the resurrected Lord, it seems to me there is also a serious spiritual battle happening.

As far as bacteria go, it is true that at some point the specific means by which genetic material is transmitted is changed. That doesn't really change anything in a qualitative way I do not think. Saying that just because bacteria can evolve doesn't give us any clue to how anything else evolves wasn't the point of my examples anyway. The mechanism of evolution is the same on a small and large scale. Furthermore, these trees implicitly assume common descent, that is the guiding conceptual principle behind them. It is true, you can imagine away that part, or just decide it is a cute mathematical trick to form these charts, but that doesn't change the fact that they are highly suggestive of common ancestors linking the end products together.

I was not personally offended by the comments of MrsRational. I am secure in my beliefs and position and am happy to have it scrutinized by anyone who disagrees with me. I feel that I am able to defend myself in light of any emotive arguments and am dissappointed that MrsRational is no longer able to participate in this discussion. Awesome post Tristan. Very gracious response and concern for your "adversary" here. (You know what I mean.) Awesome character quality indeed. (Free Rationale). Lol I agree Spock. MrsRational should tone down the insults, but it is nice to have more than one side presented on this subform. I too am impressed and pleased to see that Tristen could see beyond the rhetoric and enjoy the exchange.

Right, these are interesting thoughts. Insofar as I believe God create an infinite amount of 'stuff' in no time,it doesn't seem to be of essential theological significance to me, vis a vis God's nature, whether or not creation happened in 24 hr cycles. I get the idea from Genesis 1 that there was an orderly creation, that God was completely in control the entire time, and so on.Now the question is, why are they reported in that particular way, and that is the question I wonder about. I see the potential for both Big Bang cosmology, broadly speaking, and evolution, to be reflected in the ordering of creation in Genesis.

What I mean is that how you view your origins, meaning if you feel you are the product of evolution and simply a higher animal or if you believe you are made in God's image as a special creation from the dust of the earth, apart from the rest of the created order. That will affect your worldview and your view of absolute morality/ethics. What should matter more is your metaphysics and metaethics. I am not sure why a theory about how the physical world interacts, which is what evolution is, should affect your values. Whether I think string theory is true or not doesn't, neither should this. I hear modern evolutionists all of the time referring to man as a higher animal, but in the sense that man is higher than a dog or a cat, not that we have some dogs that are higher than other dogs or human that are higher than other humans. The point is that if you see yourself as merely an evolved animal and you see others as evolved animals, then at some point, there are going to be some who are viewed as less fit, not less evolved, like they would have said say 70 years ago. In the evolutionary picture, humans are not higher than, or 'more fit' than bacteria, cats or slugs. any species that seems to have a stable population, or growing population, is 'equally fit' and equally 'evolved', 'progressed' or whatever else you want to insert in there. Saying that humans are 'higher than' cats *based on evolution* is confused about what the theory says. Its' not a matter of saying Evolution actively causes people to devalue other people. It is a matter of where an evolutionary worldview leads. Margaret Sanger didn't say that evolution made her do what she did. Rather it was the worldview that developed from her view of humans as animals. She didn't misunderstand the theory at all. She was completely consistent with theory as it was understood in her day. I'd say, as I stated above, purely physical theories, which give us information about how the physical world interacts, cannot be consistent or inconsistent with a moral theory. These are categorically different arenas. Insofar as someone is a naturalist, denies that we have souls, denies that there are objective moral truths etc., then yeah, they could justify all kinds of terrible things for arbitrary reasons.

But evolution DOES have an affect on morality and ethics. If I am just a higher primate, that evolved from a hominid ancestor that evolved from a other creatures going back to some kind of primoridial soup, then why should morals or ethics matter? What people fail to understand is your view on where you came from affects your worldview. Evolution is meant, in part, to be an explanation of man's origin without God. That is why evolution is seen as an alternative to Genesis 1. Without a moral lawgiver, without an independent and objective standard of morality, who set's the standard for right and wrong? Stephen J. Gould argued that man is accident. To him man has no purpose and there is no good reason for man to exist at all. In his view of evolution man has no inherent worth or value. A person who sees himself and others as nothing more than higly evolved animals will, in his heart, devalue you. Adolph Hitler's first step in justifying the Holocaust was to devalue his victims. In Hitler's day there was a ladder of life in evolutionary thought and you can't judge Hitler except by the evolutionary thinking that was in play at that time. I realize that the hypothesis has been tweeked over time. Evolutionists used to claim that men evolved from apes and I think they would like to us to forget that chapter of evolutionary thought. But there is an evolutionary chain a sort of "molecules-to-man" progression. Man did evolve from something if evolution is to be believed. I am not sure how that differs from a the "ladder of life" you mention. Maybe you have a point insofar as how people view the world more generally, where they come from, where they are going and all this, just does affect stuff like morality and ethics, whether it is consistent or follows from inference strictly thought out or not. If that is what you mean then I have a better idea of what you mean here, but I'd still protest, that people being inspired by it to make up bad ethics doesn't mean the theory itself is wrong. The tree or bush of life is different because the ladder suggested some kind of progression from a lower to higher animal as if there is some top, and some bottom. The modern understanding is that every animal is equally 'on the top' as any other animal, including bacteria, including sea stars, sharks, elephants and so on. There's not one 'more highly evolved' and one 'less evolved'. The stuff that exists today exists simply because its parents/parent procreated and so on. There should be no lessons to be learned here about value because there's not really any room for that in that picture. Any value picture is going to come from misunderstanding the theory or something else. As an atheist I got it from a metaethical position which includes objective moral values (as I describe above). Others promote relativism, or think they do. Most just don't think it through much and posit random stuff as good or bad without really thinking about what that means or why anybody should care about the 'good of the species' (yeah I have heard that as an excuse... ).

Sure, but evolution is really the only option, which is why naturalists will hold to evolution and continue to do so despite the many problems with the theory. Yeah but that's like saying I'm going to derive moral values from the theory of gravity. It just doesn't work in principle. Ok, so you believed that objective morals values were just a brute fact of the universe. There are some atheists who believe this, but it seems odd that the moral and the physical realms should intersect in an obscure species on an obscure planet in a very large universe, which seems otherwise oblivious to such things. Such an explanation, while freeing the atheist from the embarrassment of moral subjectivism, really doesn't really offer anything more than for instance saying "I don't know", or did you see it differently? The bolded yeah. Ultimately there is going to be an 'I don't know moment', and that is with the brute facts about existence. For instance you could have asked me, why are there *any* properties at all, let alone moral ones, I would have said, I have no clue but this is what we observe to be the case. Why is there something instead of nothing? I don't know, but again, we know something exists. And so on. So the existence of moral properties I would have classified as a brute fact in that way yes. I thought they needed to exist because there was no good alternative that explained the facts.

I agree that descriptions don't give you moral imperatives, but they can and do influence them. Our understanding of our origins definitely impacts our understanding of human value, and ethics. Would you say that believing that all men are created in God's image and has intrinsic value, has the same net effect as believing that mankind is simply the result of time and chance and that life itself has no objective purpose or value? If you are a naturalist/physicalist, you are going to face that challenge with or without evolution. It's not really important what you thought while you were an atheist, but what's important is whether your thoughts were consistent with your worldview. It also depends on what you mean by moral absolute standards, I believe moral values and duties are objective but not necessarily absolute. I am interested in how you were able to ground objective moral values and duties as an atheist, though, so go ahead. I wasn't a naturalist/physicalist. I asserted the existence of all kinds of abstract objects. I was a moral realist and thought there were moral properties (right, wrong, good and bad) which have objective existence. So, if I say 'murder is wrong' it's a truth claim which can be right or wrong in the objective sense. That is it in a nutshell.

According to whom? From a theistic point of view one could say this, but the point of the theory of evolution is to explain the world according to naturalism, without invoking a God. When God is left out of the equation what prevents one from attaching moral weight to something like evolutionary fitness or any other subjective criteria for that matter? In fact doesn't survival of the fittest imply that the highly adapted will prevail while the lesser adapted populations will shrink? Alright, but there is nothing in the physical theory which would allow an atheist to found any ethical system. If they do, they are making a categorical error. You can't describe how nature works and then say that is how things *ought* to be. Descriptions don't give you moral imperatives. Slugs may be 'better adapted' to some environments than people are, so what? Anyway, as an atheist I thought there were moral absolute standards. I can describe for you the details if you are interested.

Makes sense to me. 14.6 billion years ago God spoke the universe into existence and BANG! And it was BIG! Spock I'm curious. How do you interpret the days in Genesis specifically? I mean not only interpreting the word day, but if you see these as something like epochs, what do you see happening in them? If you have gone over this before I apologize, but I am curious. Not dogmatic, but since you asked my thoughts, you may have them- Of course, I see those six days as a RESTORATION of planet earth. I believe in the beginning god created the heavens and earth (dateless past), thus a old earth, Satan was allowed to rule here in some form or fashion, got on Gods bad side, God judged earth with a global flood (became void and darkness), and then God restored earth in six days. Yes, I do believe these were six literal days, but I wouldn't bet my house on that. I do not believe it has to be literal either. God said a day is like a 1000 years onto him, so what if this were 6000 years in the making? I don't think it was, but you get my drift. So, I'm 95% certain our earth is old and 60% certain God restored the earth in six literal days. Good enough Spock out This is really interesting Spock. Thanks for sharing.

Makes sense to me. 14.6 billion years ago God spoke the universe into existence and BANG! And it was BIG! Spock I'm curious. How do you interpret the days in Genesis specifically? I mean not only interpreting the word day, but if you see these as something like epochs, what do you see happening in them? If you have gone over this before I apologize, but I am curious.

You're oversimplifying what the article claims. Those quotes relflect how Darwin viewed evolution relaitive to modern humans. Now today in our socially sensitive, politically corrrect world, Evolution is selectively applied to human beings. If we applied it across the board the way we do with the rest of the created order, we would have to admit that according to evolution, some human being MUST be evolutionarily inferior to other human beings. Darwin was simply being honest about the naturally logical conclusions that evolution leads to when applied to human existence. The cruelty is evoution isn't really seen until it is applied to human beings. Human beings according to most evolutionists are just higher animals, higher primates. If your argument is that God used evolution to create human beings, then you need to be honest about the theory and where it leads for human beings. If evolution didn't stop, and is still part of our world, then it must apply accross the board to all evolved creatures. You can't exclude human beings from the struggle for survival. I mean most racism is based on survival. If you look at most white supremist literature, a common theme in their books and literature is that they are fighting for their survival against the inferior races of sub-humans, or "mongrel" races. It is historical fact that Maragaret Sanger, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood considered blacks less evolved and inferior to whites and abortion was originally created to be part of her plan to eventually rid the world of black people in additoin to steriizing black people so that they could not reproduce. HItler was influenced by both Darwin and Margaret Sanger. He viewed Jews, Gypsies, and all other races inferior to his mythical "aryan" race. But his justification was to paint nonaryans as being descended from apes. In both abortion and in Hitler's holocaust the justification for murder is to paint your humans as lower animals on the evolutionary chain. Evolutionists are cool with human beings higher primates until someone decides that you are inferior he/she needs to get rid you to make their survival and the survival of their offspring, possible. Suddenly "survival of the fittest" becomes overrated when applied to human existence. Darwin's "old timey" quotes were enablers for those who were able to advance their racist agendas and it is the heart of racism today. The fact that liberal proponents of evolution are embarrassed by the way some apply evolution to human existence, the truth is that the racists are actually more honest about the social implcations of evolution than social liberals. Well... evolution properly understood in the modern science has no directionality. That's why there's an emphasis now there is no 'ladder' of life. There is no monkey, then ape, then man type of progression. There's a bush of life. Everything around us is equally 'well adapted' because it's around and still propagating. 'Well adapted' does not, and *should* have zero moral or ethical implications whatsoever. Those are founded elsewhere, such as, in our theological understandings. It's true, I agree those guys were not only racists but scientifically ignorant. They had half-baked ideas that they turned into very unfortunate social programs. But, those were not based on *modern* evolution. But people misunderstand and misuse perfectly good ideas all of the time. I mean, you need only go to the 'metaphysical' section of your Barnes and Noble to see how badly quantum mechanics is abused, or the theory of relativity. A scientific idea being abused or misunderstood-- even by researchers in the field! - means something about the person being wrong, it doesn't reflect on the theories in question. The question that is relevant in my mind is, is the idea itself a good one, even if it has been ill used by others.

Alright. Suppose you are right, and that evolution is, at the end of the day, a terrible theory and ought to be dismissed. Well first off, it is NOT a theory. It is an untested hypothesis. There are no transitional fossils. There is no evidence of one animal evolving into another animal, no common ancestor between human and apes has been or ever will be found. Evolution is just a hypothesis and bad one at that. I would have to commit intellectual suicide to subscribe to it, but I respect myself too much to be an evolutionist. It has everything to do with it. Evoution was first introduced at a time when science was in its infancy, when nothing was known about the cell and it was considered to be "simple." Over time, scientists have discovered that the cell and DNA are far more complex than anyone previously could have known, One reason people believe in an old earth today is because the more complex we discover life to be, the more time is needed for Evolution to have occurred. Had evolution been proposed in our day and age for the first time, and not some 200 years ago, it would not have been accepted by anyone. Evolution was proposed NOT on the basis of science, but on the basis of rejecting the Bible's claim that God created the world. There is no science behind it. It was an assumption that the scientific world, needing an alternative to Genesis has been vigorously trying to prove and intimidate everyone into accepting as established fact. They call it a "theory" but it is not a theory on the basis of how science defines a theory. Essentially, Evolution is assumed to be true and scientists are trying to prove what they are assuming. The evidence is interpreted through the filter of an assumption that has not been proven to be true. If you build a house on a bad foundation, everything built on that foundation will be faulty. Right, I agree with you that the science is much different than it was during Darwin's day. This is where I'm confused about your line of reasoning. Shouldn't the focus be on evolution as founded on modern understandings of genetics etc, rather than Darwin's initial research and ideas?

Nebula's thread got me thinking, and it seems like it wouldn't be that insane to see references to modern cosmological ideas in the Genesis creation account. That leads to my question, those of you who are OEC, what do you think about the broad Big Bang picture?

Alright. Suppose you are right, and that evolution is, at the end of the day, a terrible theory and ought to be dismissed. What does that have to do with the OP? Whether or not Darwin was an idiot, a thief, an all around terrible person with stupid ideas, what does *that* have to do with contemporary formulations of evolution which are based on new research and new understandings about how biology works? (whether or not correct)

No I don't mean this in a trivial or silly sense. Here's an example. Take the Large Hadron Collider, a massive experiment. Certainly, this is a very controlled environment and I am guessing you would agree that, for instance, the discovery of the Higgs boson was a genuine scientific discovery? But I am wondering what is, conceptually, different between that and say, looking at the product of reactions that happen between nuclei in the atmosphere and incoming cosmic rays. From what you seem to be saying, if we don't set the experiment up, it cannot, in principle, produce scientific evidence, but what is the qualitative difference between a collision happening in the LHC and one that occurs between a cosmic ray proton and the upper atmosphere? Ultimately we can only probe nature in a more careful way. The LHC is the world's largest microscope. It is helpful that we can produce an enormous amount of data with it, have tight controls over the environment and so on. However, for each individual interaction there's a lot that cannot be controlled. Such things are accounted for in the statistics. But I cannot see what the *conceptual* difference is between what happens there and what happens in the upper atmosphere, if people are looking very closely. There's more controlled observation. There's less controlled observation.All of it though is to observe what happens in such and such conditions, with greater precision and accuracy. The most successful theory yet is quantum mechanics. Quantum electrodynamics is wildly successful, predicting the value to 12 decimal places. Theorists calculate what the theory says it should be, then experiments are set up to see if that is indeed the case. If it isn't, then it's known where the theory breaks, where additional factors matter, which tells us a lot about nature. But there again is something we set out to observe about nature. It's true, we can make the query repeatedly at our leisure if we have an experimental set up in a lab. That's the benefit to doing it that way, and it's not a small benefit.-But, it's not conceptually different from observing things in conditions 'as they are', anymore than an individual hadron collision in the LHC is somehow different from one in the atmosphere, if both are being observed by careful human researchers.

I disagree that the examples are "solid". They do not demonstrate the necessity of Common Ancestry for any discovery. I have provided specific arguments demonstrating why they fail to do so. And that's my point - no scientific discovery is necessarily, logically reliant upon Common Ancestry being true. Every discovery made by science could have been made independently of these secular assumptions. The assumption that all life on earh is related through a series of common Ancestors was not a necessary, logical prerequisit of any scientific discovery. What that means is - I can take my medicine without logically compromising my position. And I can confidently, rationally put to rest any specious claim that my position ignores evidence or is anti-science. I am happy for people to "judge for themselves". Rational people will consider both arguments and either agree with my proposal, or attempt to provide a rational rebuttal of my position. Others who are less rational will simply see what they want to see (in accordance with their own confirmation biases) and continue to stumble blindly through life; comfortable in their ignorance. Alright, but I don't see how you are going to *generate* phylogenetic trees without assuming common ancestry. That is how they are conceptually extended at all. I can certainly see how you could use them without that presumption, after they are already formed. As to your last statements, I have to admit I haven't discerned any positive arguments aside from appeals to enhanced consistency from accepting YEC and declaring that such and such line of reasoning, body of evidence and so forth could be interpreted differently but without presenting a thorough model which has better explanatory powers. Your comments about viruses seemed diversionary from the upshot of the presentation I linked you to. Nothing you said about them seemed to relate to what the presentation was actually about. Considering phylogenetic mapping has been successfully used to help deal with them, it would seem that they are actually successfully modeled by evolution. In my view there isn't much to be said to that. It is entirely possible I am missing your point.

Okay. Phylogenetics presupposes common ancestry. I think there are many solid examples in the link that people can judge for themselves.

I'm not sure what a bunch of old timey quotes have to do with scientific knowledge a century and a half later... hmm. Saying so and so believed in animal magnetism doesn't mean he couldn't have had a good physical theory. Likewise, having false ethical beliefs has nothing to do with whether or not the broader concept of biological evolution is valid.

I apologize for the format of this link, as it appears to be lecture slides, but it is on topic. Specific examples are included. Some pretty interesting and amazing ones in my opinion. http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/evolution/applied.pdf