Evolution

[Guest Thomas I believe]

The truth is this.....

Genesis 1:1-31

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Genesis 2: 1-25

1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

4These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

5And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

18And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

25And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Its real simple either we believe or we don't. We did'nt evolve and these words above prove it.

[Guest NooPilgrim]

Bread of Life:

Evolution does not work to the benefit of the creature, but to the benefit of the genes that cause the creature.

Your answer is just passing the buck. What motivation would genes have to replicate? Why is there a need?

In question 2 I proposed this very idea and asked the source for such a need. why is there a need to replicate? you only answered that question by citing the need to replicate

Genes, in order to replicate themselves. Successful genes will be the ones that make us good at procreating.

The purpose of our existence is to worship God and do His work on earth. This purpose comes from God the Father, and is displayed perfectly through the life of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. God the Holy Spirit helps us achieve this purpose.

I thankyou for your elowuent and faithful response, but this question was for the evolutionists, rather than the theistic-evolutionists, if you understand my meaning.

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Heathen:

To deny the validity of evolutionary science would be to deny, for example, the combustion engine. The combustion engine runs on fossil fuels. Geology, chemistry, biology etc are involved in the process of gaining and refining fossil fuels. Without these sciences there would be no cars. These sciences and their methods are used in evolutionary science as well.

I could equally propose that one drop of milk holds enough potential energy to fuel the planet for several decades and that this theory must have weight because though it is not yet proven, we made created ice-cream as a by-product of the experiments and now loads of people have ice-cream for dessert.

Stating that you set off to investigate one thing and found something totally different but beneficial does not validate the projected results of the original theory. What a preposterously irrelevant comment to make.

You are free to believe or disbelieve, agree or disagree as you wish based on your faith or otherwise but to actively seek to spread misinformation is simply reprehesible.

You could begin the process yourself by opposing the teaching of "theory" as "fact". Teaching Kids to think for themselves rather than indoctrinating them would be a good place for you to start your crusade

There is a great deal of evidence for evolution while the only evidence for your god is the bible.

If you search the forums you will find citations of many historical and non-relisious accounts also. As well as the overwhelming testimony of Christians throught the world and some of the amzing accounts that follow them. There is also prophecy both fulfilled and unfulfilled, some of which is unfolding around us, but I'm sure you'd write it off as coincidence.

Evidence for evolution, when it comes down to it is "Some of this junk looks similar and stuff" and filling in the gaps in the evidence and then passing off the proposed fillers as facts. eg. We have found no fossil record for an intermediate between species, but it is only a matter of time. (considering such a change takes millions of years, you'd think thered be plenty of dead bodies lying around to prove the point. Why are all these missing links still missing?)

Who gave you the silly idea that missing evidence=proof? And proof of what? Missing evidence=no reason for doubt? What are you talking about?

The theory of evolution currently rests on anecotal evidence, common genes, shared DNA percentiles etc. Yet there are plenty of gaps in the evidence such as fossil evidence of any whale-dog or a fish-eagle (to put it very simplistically) Dating methods based on assumptions which dismiss many and varied anomolous results. None of these somewhat relevant and perhaps even detremental gaps seem to cause any kind of caution or obstacle for the teaching of theory as fact. Are you willing to stake your actual life on the the theory of evolution? because if you allow it to be an obstacle between you and God, you stake not just your life, but your eternal condition on it.

The Truth is that there ARE or WERE various in between stages. Like the lung fish, mudskipper, walking catfish

Do you have any fossil evidence to prove that these were ever anything other than a lungfish a mudskipper or a walking catfish?

Actually, evolution teaches that SOME type(s) of fish started either or both, leaving the water as a means of escape or to take advantage of other food sources. Over time (millions of years) a mutation appeared that allowed one of them to hold it's breath longer out of water which allowed it to survive longer and this mutation was passed on to it's progeny. Those fish that did not mate with the bearers of this mutation never evolved lungs. Now you have to species of creature from one.

I'd sincerely be interested to know what is the estimated percentage of identical mutations in any animal population in a single generation, if you know of such a statistic or where I might look to find one.

Foraging on the ground more and being forced to change it's diet caused it to stand up on it's hind legs to look for predators in the tall grasses while it moved and foraged. Those primates who moved to other areas with the declining trees didn't need to adapt and therefore never started standing on it's hind legs.

When you teach an ape to walk on two legs instead of four, you still have an ape.

*further quotes in red text*

We have illistrations of a cosologically centrist earth and a flat earth. Do you still believe the earth is flat just because it was the prevailing theory at one time?

replace "flat earth" with "evolution theory" and in 50 years, this quote may come back to haunt you, you never know....

Can you cite me any modern text book that has such illustrations shown as fact and is used in schools to teach that the earth is flat?

Christians murdered people for disagreeing with those views

Perhaps they behaved like animals because they were taught they evolved from one. What gives you a moral advantage? what gives you the right to have any morals? where do you morals even come from? You just look like food or a mate to me.

But another squirrel had a mutation that formed a membrane between it's front and back leg on each side. When it jumped from tree to tree it could kinda float a bit allowing it to jump farther. This alowed it to escape danger and widen it's foraging territory. It DOES get the opportunity to pass this mutation on and it's childrens children all pass it on. The other squirrels without the mutation still exist and they are doing well too. Now you have 2 different types of squirrels.

Thankyou for such great insight. So today I learned that squirrels are still squirrels and they still live in trees. Great.

I'm not sure that we as a board of posters are keeping a clear distinction of our contentions Re:Evolution theory. If I might propose the underlying point of contention:

I personally, and I think the rest of my advocates would state the same (speak up if you dont) have no issue with micro-evolution, which perhaps would be better summed as minor adaptations.

The real bone of contention is the premise that:

a) one species evolves into another (ie. whale evolves into prairie-dog)

b) it took millions of years (based on contemprary dating methods - which we would contend are nowhere near as reliable or accurate as the common man is led to believe)

If anyone has additional contention or disagrees, please speak up, if not it may help to remember these two points so that we dont end up in a futile debate on issues that we actually agree on.

Edited March 30, 2006 by NooPilgrim

[Bread_of_Life]

Noopilgrim,

Your answer is just passing the buck. What motivation would genes have to replicate? Why is there a need?

Genes are molecules made up of animo acids. They have no motivation, they just do what they do.

One might ask, what is the motivation for oxygen and hydrogen to react - what is their need to form water? The answer is - there is no motivation - they don't feel a need - they are just molecules obeying natural laws. Similarly, DNA is doing what it does - replicating. It's just that some DNA replicated better than other DNA. It's quite that simple.

Butero,

If that is how evolution works, why should anyone be concerned about the destruction of places like the rain forest? If that is how things work, life forms will simply adapt to their new environment and become a different creature. If you took away the home of the spotted owl, they would simply adapt by becoming an enirely different creature.

Unfortunately, evolution works on quite long timescales, much longer than the timescales on which loggers work. If an animal cannot adapt and evolve fast enough - there is another option - extinction.

In reality, it would help them move up the evolutionary scale as it were.

No, they're already well adapted to their environment - it would actually move them back down to being maladapted, and they'd have to adapt all over again to their new environment.

[The Journey]

"irreducible complexity"

This is the main philisophical problem that naturalists stumble over when they are brutally honest regarding the difficulties of atheistic evolution.

This is the whole point of Stephen Gould's "hopeful monsters." The idea is that for many extremely complex biological systems they must have appeared intact or nearly intact for there to be a meaningful survival advantage.

For a naturalist no matter how complex the system the proof that it evolved is found in the system itself. It can be no other way. It may be amazing, but it happended. It may seem miraculous, but it happended.

In religious terms this is called faith.

Dr. Steve

[ecco]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

NooPilgrim:

Ecco, your protests of the "poor education" of your opponents in regards to evolution theory only presents the premise that evolution, whilst treated at as fact by the scientific community at large, is poorly taught in our schools.

I would not disagree. However, many aspects of evolution are as complex as theories of gravity.

NooPilgrim:

Other sciences such as math were taught to me as fact also and I'm sure to others and a very good job was done of it too. I doubt I shall ever forget that 1+1=2.

No doubt. However, how good is your current knowledge of advanced mathematics.

The point being that many people who argue against evolution use completely baseless arguments, as I pointed out in my previous post. It is like someone who well remembers 1+1=2 trying to argue against solid geometry.

NooPilgrim:

If evolution is such an inherent part of understanding where we come from, who and what we are and where we are going and if it is a key "fact" to such massively detremental and important questions as "what does life all mean?" then why is it not taught with the same effeciency and vigour as basic math?

The teaching of evolution has nothing to do with "what does life all mean?" In any case, the most important part of "what does life all mean?" is what does life all mean to YOU?" Why do you presuppose that there must be a grand purpose?

[Arthur Durnan]

The hypothesis of mega-evolution is scientifically dubious and intellectually nihilistic. The fact is that the basic requirement, the spontaneous origin of life, has never been pbserved or demonstrated, and in the light of all probabilities & the laws of thermodynamics, is a most unlikely hypothesis.

The precise reason why mega-evolution is believed by self-called "atheists" and agnostics today is not due to the EVIDENCE for it, but rather due to the NEED for it. Any "natural miracle" (that inert matter is creative) is far more preferable to said agnostic over a "supernatural miracle" (that God is the Creator). One should not be expected to swallow the inane view that order sprang OUT OF CHAOS and life emerged SPONTANEOUSLY, the product of the fortuitous collision of mindless molecules! Such a view imputes a MUCH BIGGER miracle to dead matter than the one creation requires! Frankly, on this particular subject, the "atheistic" position is as dumb as, and dumber than, a box of hammers.

http://arthurdurnan.freeyellow.com

[ecco]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

ChadB:

Remember evolution states that the changes in an organism(evolution) result from beneficial RANDOM mutations. Now, the last time a checked mutations are never good and always result in that particular copy being flawed to the point where it hurts the organism its found within or death occurs.

What is the basis for this assertion? If dark skin makes one better adapted to live in a sunny climate, why is that a bad mutation? When humans migrated from Africa to Europe that adaptation was no longer beneficial.

ChadB:

Example: Fish developed appendages in order to become amphibians not because they wanted to but because the accidential mutation happened where they grew appendages and then figured out how to use them. Oh, and they accidentially grew a functional lung too.

Yet today there are several species of fish that regularly travel across stretches of land to get from one pond to another. They can get oxygen from water and from air.

Thomas I Believe:

Its real simple either we believe or we don't. We did'nt evolve and these words above prove it.

Your first sentence is correct. As I pointed out in an earlier post, if you believe in Genesis (or any other religious creation story) you cannot believe in evolution.

Your second sentence only proves that three thousand years ago some people wrote a creation story (one of thousands) because they had no other way of explaining anything.

HorizonEast:

Ecco

[ecco]

The Journey:

"irreducible complexity"

[Copper Scroll]

Alternatively:

a ) One species evolves into another (ie. A common ancestor evolves into two closely related species like horses and donkeys)

b) The earth is 6000 years old and everyone is a direct descendant of Jonah or his kids (there

[Guest NewPilgrim]

The teaching of evolution has nothing to do with "what does life all mean?" In any case, the most important part of "what does life all mean?" is what does life all mean to YOU?" Why do you presuppose that there must be a grand purpose?

I know the grand purpose in life. Evolution, however, though it does not directly propose a grand purpose is founded on the continual need for procreation and survival, it suggests quite strongly that all life has a drive or a purpose to it and perhaps that purpose is to exist, but it still, to my mind, beggars the larger question on behalf of the unbeliever, if all life that we know of is geared up to its own continual existence, why should it be so? especially given the core-theme that the existence of the universe was a random and unprovoked event which came from nothing.

Science does not