Science academies around world urge evolution lessons

[Nero's Fiddle]

As a side note, what happens if we let loose the paedophiles, ultimately? What does it matter if we go to Heaven or Hell? What does it matter if the Bible is literally true? Why do anything, if anything we do has no meaningful use?

My point is that our existence IS meaningful.

[dd_8630]

As a side note, what happens if we let loose the paedophiles, ultimately? What does it matter if we go to Heaven or Hell? What does it matter if the Bible is literally true? Why do anything, if anything we do has no meaningful use?

My point is that our existence IS meaningful.

And my point is that what meaning can there possibly be? What is there that we, God, or anyone else can do that means anything? At the end of the day, we live and die and maybe have an afterlife. So what?

[Nero's Fiddle]

Now you're talking a Christian's language!

God told Moses that His name is "I AM THAT I AM." He is eternally extant, before time, before space, before matter, before any law or truth except that HE IS and He is who HE IS.

God is the reason for everything.

He made us. He loves us.

His desire is to give us the best, which is Him.

Selfless love at great cost.

God.

[rfw]

Ron Lyttle is a volunteer Animal Talker at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, specializing in bats from around the world. In fact, he is usually referred to by his colleagues and tourists as: Batman. He has written the article below, and has agreed to allow its inclusion on this web page. Ron is also an active member of DSA, Oregon's "Design Science Association" for the study of creation/evolution issues. Please notice the copyright information in the Introduction: http://www.creationism.org/ (see link below).

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COULD LIFE "JUST HAPPEN"?

by Ron Lyttle

THE STORY

Millions of years ago, evolutionists will tell you, many chemicals were swirling around in lifeless seas (or ponds, or puddles) here on earth. Methane gas was in the atmosphere being bombarded with cosmic rays from outer space, and powerful lightning bolts arced through the skies, lighting up the desolate landscape. Given enough time, cosmic rays, and lightning bolts, a "primordial soup" gradually formed which contained amino acids. These in turn got hooked together to form simple proteins, the "building blocks" of life. At some point these proteins happened to get connected in just the right way, and a threshold was crossed: the proteins started reproducing themselves, and simple life was "born".

During uncounted eons, this simple life gradually became more and more complex as chance modifications of the original proteins combined with external conditions of moisture, temperature, food supply, etc., to eventually produce all the varied and complex life forms inhabiting first the oceans, then the land, and finally the air, that we see today. Homo sapiens is seen as the topmost branch in the evolutionary tree of life, but the tree is still growing, and who knows what the next branches will look like?

REALITY CHECK

While the above is an interesting story, and variations of it (with many imaginative details added) are taught in most schools and universities around the world as the scientific explanation for the origin and development of life, more and more people are asking, "Is that really how we came to be? Do those people who call themselves scientists really know what they are talking about?" After all, nobody was around millions of years ago to watch the stirring of the primordial soup, or to see the first fish crawl out onto land, or to see the first winged creature take to the air in powered flight. The story of evolution is a pretty one, but is it supported by the facts?

RNA & DNA

Every living thing, from the most simple virus to the most complex animal, contains in its cells very complex compounds called nucleic acid . There are two forms, called ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Viruses contain only one or the other, but cells contain both. While RNA controls protein production, DNA is the main component in chromosomes, which provide the blueprint or pattern of heredity. Every time a cell divides into two, the RNA in the cell body and the DNA in the nucleus must be exactly copied, with one copy going with each cell. DNA is an incredibly complex molecule, resembling a long ladder that has been twisted into a spiral. The sides of the ladder are made up of compounds called phosphates and sugars , while the "rungs" are composed of two of four possible bases in all the possible combinations. The exact make-up and order of "rungs" varies from one kind of living thing to another. Each DNA "ladder" has about 20,000 "rungs", and each chromosome contains many thousands of DNA molecules. RNA has a similar structure, but the sugar is different, and one of the four bases is also different.

Since it is the chromosomal DNA (and in some cases RNA) that provides the blueprint for each cell and individual, if any of the thousands of rungs gets damaged, or if different combinations get substituted in the copy, that cell will be defective. Contrary to popular belief, most changes in the DNA structure (mutations) at best weaken, and at worst kill the cell. Only a very few are neutral, and beneficial changes are virtually non-existent. To produce a healthy, fully-functional individual, each copy of DNA and RNA must be identical to the original, down to the last "rung".

THE POINT

That such complexity could arise from "primordial soup" by random-chance chemical reactions is statistically, bio-chemically, and thermodynamically impossible. 1) There are too many connections in a DNA molecule to ever occur by chance, no matter how long you allow. 2) When biochemists have managed to produce simple amino acids in simulated "soup", it was by carefully controlling the conditions; there was nothing "random" or "chance" about the process, and the leap from simple amino acids to a DNA molecule is astronomical . 3) The second law of thermodynamics says that order moves toward disorder, and complex moves toward simple (not the other way around), unless acted upon by a higher force . Lightning bolts (the supposed driving force behind the chemical reactions) are actually great randomizers. The notion that anything as complex as a DNA molecule could arise by accident is therefore a non-scientific absurdity!

YEAH, BUT...

For the sake of discussion, suppose that a strand of DNA did somehow come together, and suppose further that thousands united to form a functional chromosome, and many chromosomes all joined forces (and no lightning bolt blasted the whole collection apart). You still only have a blueprint, a list of instructions telling how to make a living organism. It takes a living cell to use that blueprint, but it takes that blueprint to make a living cell. (To this seeming paradox evolutionists can only mumble, "it must have happened somehow . Life exists, doesn't it?")

AN EXAMPLE

I work in a manufacturing plant. We buy raw iron and brass castings that our machine shop turns into finished parts that our assemblers put together to make pumps. The machinist gets a blueprint created by the Engineering Department that shows all the dimensions of the finished part, and special instructions like how smooth a surface has to be, what thread size for tapped holes, "start machining here," etc. You can lay that blueprint on a raw casting and watch it for a billion years and it won't make a finished part. But the machinist picks it up, puts the casting in his machine, and when he is done a part is ready for use. He needs the blueprint to tell him how to make the part, and the blueprint is worthless without the machine and operator. So it is with DNA and living cells. Each needs the other to function, and together they can make new cells.

IN CONCLUSION

Far from being a logical, scientific, provable explanation of the origin and development of life on earth, Evolution appears to be a belief system held to with as much religious faith as any other creed, with the added difficulty of being contrary to known facts. To believe in evolution, a "scientist" must throw out the scientific method, suspend his common sense, and twist or ignore the facts. That so many continue to do so, and belittle those who dare to challenge their belief, shows the strength of their faith. Far from being open-minded seekers of truth, evolutionists appear to be closed-minded, dogmatic "defenders of the faith". Did life "just happen"? What do you think?

"COULD LIFE 'JUST HAPPEN'?" is Copyright 1998,

by Ron Lyttle ronlyttle@iname.com

<http://www.creationism.org/batman/>

Go to the Introduction of: www.creationism.org

[rfw]

12 Quotes from Leading Evolutionists

This page may be freely copied: http://www.creationism.org/articles/quotes.htm

Evolution is science? It is admittedly unobservable, lacking fossil evidence, dependent upon scientific consensus, and essentially a belief system about past life on Earth. The following 12 quotes are from leading and well known scientists and researchers. A larger work with 130 similar quotes is available: "The Revised Quote Book", edited by Dr. A. Snelling, PhD, pub. by: Creation Science Foundation, Australia

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"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127

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"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory."

Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216

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"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that 'a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'."

Sir Fred Hoyle (English astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University), as quoted in "Hoyle on Evolution". Nature, vol. 294, 12 Nov. 1981, p. 105

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"Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to."

Referring to comments made by Richard Leakey (Director of National Museums of Kenya) in The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May 1983, Magazine, p. 3

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"The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man."

John Reader (photo-journalist and author of "Missing Links"), "Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?" New Scientist, 26 March 1981, p. 802

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"A five million-year-old piece of bone that was thought to be a collarbone of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib, ...He [Dr. T. White] puts the incident on par with two other embarrassing [sic] faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig's tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or 'Piltdown Man,' the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the 'earliest Englishman'.

"The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone.'"

Dr. Tim White (anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley). As quoted by Ian Anderson "Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin's rib", in New Scientist, 28 April 1983, p. 199

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"We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution."

Pierre-Paul Grass

[Rober H]

So a man wrote about another man in a prejudice and ignorant time of people who broke the norm? Culture develops because of people who look at thier culture (usually after seeing another, as Paul had) and see flaws in it. Further, why is it that you only give two options? Perhaps there was a man called Jesus, who did say what he said in the Bible. Jesus is an amazing philosopher and I respect him. However, just because he is a revolutionary, does not make him (the son of) God.

People that really want to learn and ask questions on why people think about a topic like evolution the way they do don't make provactive statement like the one above.

People that want to learn why other people believe the way they do ask the question "why" they don't debate to make their points. That is "selling" something.

"wrong on all counts" is not asking why or how come.

[buckthesystem]

QUOTE: BTS

"If a fair maiden kisses a frog which instantly changes into a handsome prince we would call it a fairy tale. But if the frog takes 40 million years to turn into a prince we call it evolution".

Quote dd 8630: "If an animal is magically created/transmogrified by an unneccesarily royal being it is called Creationism. But if this animal is transformed over millions of years, as predicted by empirical science, it's called a theory (which as we all know arn't real)"

"Why would a frog evolve into a prince? It'd need to somehow defy probability and cross the taxonomical classes of Amphibia to Mammalia, develop a monarchy completey with male heirs analogous with our own Princes. Still, not impossible". End Quote.

BTS: I think we need to accept a little bit of "poetic license" in this. Don't you? It is just a catchphrase, not to be taken literally.

[Nero's Fiddle]

Great quotes, rfw! I had heard them before, but didn't know where to find a link to use them.

[CSLewis]

I am a theistic evolutionist and don't have a problem with Darwin's theory. The Bible is a religious book not a science book. Please remain open=minded toward evolution and maybe an atheist will remain open minded to God!

[Rober H]

I am a theistic evolutionist and don't have a problem with Darwin's theory. The Bible is a religious book not a science book. Please remain open=minded toward evolution and maybe an atheist will remain open minded to God!

The bible teaches that man was created from the dust of the ground. It does not teach that man evolved from slime. I believe the bible and reject evolution. A Christian should reject Theistic evoulution and any church that teaches otherwise is deceived.

Genesis 1:26-27 And 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. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Evolution called "theistic" or otherwise is a lie.

Christians should not cater to atheists to make God more palatable to them.

Psalms 53:1 To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.