Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
On the contrary. Outside of the US, the majority of theists accept evolution. There is nothing in the theory of evolution that precludes the existence of God. It may contradict certain literal interpretations of scripture, but it does not contradict belief in God.
Yes, nvxplorer, I agree with the part of this statement I bolded. And to you it shows validation of evolution. That's fine from your point of view. To me this is a sad, sad thing.
Don't everyone hop on me about this, but here's why it saddens me and why, ultimately, evolution does preclude God. (NOTE: I posted this explanation somewhere before, but can't remember where. Oh, well... a typing I must go )
Now, those who are saved, born again by the blood of Jesus Christ, who truly believe in Him are saved and forever shall be saved. Evolution, however, is an inconsistency with the Bible itself. God tells us in his Holy Word that he created everything. It doesn't say over millions of years I made one thing, didn't like it, changed it up and produced something new. Evolution by very definition calls for the death of organisms to produce newer, better organisms. There was no death and dying in the creation until the fall of man (Adam) but evolution expouses there was millions of years of death and dying before man arrived. Therein is the contradiction. Death was the penalty for sin and the very foundational reason for Jesus to come to earth to die on the cross to save us from death, the last enemy.
Even Dawkins (staunch evolutionist) freely admits this next item: Without Adam and Eve, there's no original sin. Without original sin there's no need for death as punishment. With out death as punishment for sin, there's no reason for Jesus to sacrifice himself on the cross. Without this sacrifice in the cross there's no need for God/Christianity. That's why it saddens me that those who believe in God/Jesus are so willing to compromise the Holy Word of God. Once you compromise the Bible in Genesis, you basically crack the foundation for the entire Bible and must make compromises elsewhere.
mams1559, first, thanks for all of your thoughts on this subject. I think it's gotten very interesting. Let me ask you a question. We talked earlier about the scientific method and how theories are discarded as new ones take their place. I stated that science doesn't start out with the answer already known and then go out and look for evidence that validates it. Do you agree with that statement? The reason that I oppose creationism is because it does exactly that. That web site you keep referring to is named after a book in the Bible and is constantly making references to passages in the Bible as though they're the cornerstones of science itself. Don't you think that this proves that there is an obvious bias and an obvious attempt to push the so called evidence in a certain direction?
But there is a lot more. You have the words of a few dead goatherders to tell you that god created you. Evolution has the work of thousands of scientists, over centuries of time, conducting extensive research. .
Excuse me, but my God is NOT deand and the Bible was NOT written by a bunch of dead "goatherders". Bible is The Word of God written by men under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Mock me if you wish, but do NOT degrade my Bible and if you want to attack the Bible, get your facts straight first!
Quote:
Originally Posted by stretch00
Also, the chimp/typewriter analogy is not evolution. People, please learn what evolution actually states before you start to argue against it.
If you want to use the chimp/typwriter thing, here is a better way of doing it.
Take a thousand chimps with typewriters. Let them each type a page of stuff. If there are any letter sequences that are kind of close to words, keep those. Let them retype everything, except the portions of words that make sense. Eventually it will get closer to being a word. The chimp typing might look something like this:
hxmt ax watre tua haret ib
then-
homb ix wetre tme heret il
then
home is weere the herrt is
then
home is where the heart is.
See, not random, but building on each generation.
Please note that this is a very, very, very rough analogy, and I do not mean it to represent evolution exactly. It is simply a means of showing that evolution has a self correcting process involved, it is not simply random.
Well, your precisous Dawkins used a computer and a similar analogy above to show evolution could happen. But again, there was a creator, a mind behind it. You have to realize, he started with someone who programmed the computer to come up with a predetermined sentence. This is intelligence directing a "random" process to come to a preselected conclusion that he wanted to show could support evolution. It only backfires and shows you need a creator behind it all. According to evolution, it was random chance that started the whole ball of wax and therefore it didn't know where it was going.
And thousands of scientists over hundreds of years can still be misguided and wrong Some of the best scientists were creationists
Ok. First point, to start to address the issue of Mercury. I just read the link that Mams cited, and he is not talking about the shrinking sun, but about the composition of the planet mercury. From the AIG web:
Ok. What does this have to do with biology? Evolution is the change of allele frequency over time. Or, more simply, how genes mutate randomly, and through natural selection, cause adaption which leads to speciation. How does the composition of the planet Mercury have anything to do with that? I do not care if Mercury is found to consist entirely of losing lottery tickets, it says NOTHING about evolutionary biology.
So this is a straw man, and not relevant to the discussion of creation vs. evolution.
This has everything to do with evolution. Where did biological evolution begin if the universe and planets weren't here? Evolution has to start somewhere. If evolution can't be used to show where the planet came from, then where the chemicals came from that supposedly joined together randomly to form the first cell, there's no basis for biological evolution. And those articles regarding Mercury that cause problems for planetary evolution also cause problems for biological evolution. You can't have one without the other (from an evolutionists standpoint, mind you)
mams1559, I noticed that you skipped all the tough questions. I asked you if your opinion was based on the Bible and if you were just looking for evidence to validate your belief. You didn't respond to that question. Why do you continue to pretend that there's serious scientific inquiry going on that supports your belief when it's obvious that you're going to hang on to what you believe no matter what science discovers?
mams1559, first, thanks for all of your thoughts on this subject. I think it's gotten very interesting. Let me ask you a question. We talked earlier about the scientific method and how theories are discarded as new ones take their place. I stated that science doesn't start out with the answer already known and then go out and look for evidence that validates it. Do you agree with that statement? The reason that I oppose creationism is because it does exactly that. That web site you keep referring to is named after a book in the Bible and is constantly making references to passages in the Bible as though they're the cornerstones of science itself. Don't you think that this proves that there is an obvious bias and an obvious attempt to push the so called evidence in a certain direction?
But (to quote an evolutionist on this forum somewhere) "99%" of scientists believe in evolution to begin with. When they're doing their scientific research, they are starting from that worldview to begin with, but it's accepted so that's okay. When creationists start with the Biblical worldview and perform scientific research, they're charged with not conducting science.
I guess you have to understand when you believe the Bible to be truth on all topics upon which it speaks (aside -- this does not mean I believe the Bible is a scientific text book. Please read my statement carefully), your perspective changes. The operational scientific method does not change. How the findings are interpreted is influenced.
For example -- the Grand Canyon. Evolutionists believe it took thousands or millions of years to form. This is already their starting point because they believe in evolution. They use uniform methods to calculate backwards how long they think it took by the obersvations they make today. They make assumptions about erosion and deposits, etc. (that they were constant throughout time) and they come up with about how long it took to carve the canyon by the force of the river.
Creationists have the same information, the same Grand Canyon. However, because they believe the Bible, they don't accept the same date. Why? Because the evolutionary thought is there was no global Noachian Flood. We do. So the creationist model for how the canyon was carved takes this catastrophic event into consideration when calculating all the forces that take place to carve a canyon and discover, it really doesn't need to take thousands or millions of years. It fits with what they believe to be the truth as revealed in the Word of God. These are realistic, operationally scientific supported explanations that allows the same evidence both sides use to fit a Biblical worldview when you take into account historical information contained in the Bible.
Also, there are scientific arguments creationists used to use to defend the veracity of the Bible, but then newer science proved them wrong. So, as good scientists, we no longer use those arguments. But then we're called names because we "changed our tune". Evolutionists change their tune constantly, but they're not berrated for it. Just another thought I'd like to put out there.
I hope this helps. I know I rambled. It's been a long day!!
This has everything to do with evolution. Where did biological evolution begin if the universe and planets weren't here? Evolution has to start somewhere. If evolution can't be used to show where the planet came from, then where the chemicals came from that supposedly joined together randomly to form the first cell, there's no basis for biological evolution. And those articles regarding Mercury that cause problems for planetary evolution also cause problems for biological evolution. You can't have one without the other (from an evolutionists standpoint, mind you)
Evolution started when life started. I think many people have an incorrect idea of what is means when one speaks of evolution when referring to the biological theory. It is often confused with the colloquial usage of the term which is simply change over time. Evolution, when referring to the scientific theory, is not the same thing. It is contextually dependent.
Audesirk, Audesirk, and Byers (2002) define evolution as:
Quote:
the descent of modern organisms with modification from preexisting life-forms; strictly speaking, any change in the proportions of different genotypes in a population from one generation to the next (G-9).
Audesirk, T., Audesirk, G., & Byers, B. (2002). Biology: Life on earth. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Alters (2000) defines evolution as:
Quote:
a scientific theory of organismal change over time originally developed by Charles Darwin; it embodies the ideas that species alive today are descendants of species living long ago, and that species have changed and diverged from one another over billions of years; the process of change over time by which existing populations of organisms develop from ancestral form through modification of their characteristics (G-10).
Alters, S. (2000). Biology: Understanding life. (3rd ed.). Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Evolution, as a biological theory, deals with life not planetary formation. However, I can understand how some people can be confused when the colloquial term is utilized when describing aspects of science. People here planetary evolution or chemical evolution and think this is part of the same thing as the theory Darwin and Wallace pieced together - independently. However, it is not.
But (to quote an evolutionist on this forum somewhere) "99%" of scientists believe in evolution to begin with. When they're doing their scientific research, they are starting from that worldview to begin with, but it's accepted so that's okay. When creationists start with the Biblical worldview and perform scientific research, they're charged with not conducting science.
I guess you have to understand when you believe the Bible to be truth on all topics upon which it speaks (aside -- this does not mean I believe the Bible is a scientific text book. Please read my statement carefully), your perspective changes. The operational scientific method does not change. How the findings are interpreted is influenced.
For example -- the Grand Canyon. Evolutionists believe it took thousands or millions of years to form. This is already their starting point because they believe in evolution. They use uniform methods to calculate backwards how long they think it took by the obersvations they make today. They make assumptions about erosion and deposits, etc. (that they were constant throughout time) and they come up with about how long it took to carve the canyon by the force of the river.
Creationists have the same information, the same Grand Canyon. However, because they believe the Bible, they don't accept the same date. Why? Because the evolutionary thought is there was no global Noachian Flood. We do. So the creationist model for how the canyon was carved takes this catastrophic event into consideration when calculating all the forces that take place to carve a canyon and discover, it really doesn't need to take thousands or millions of years. It fits with what they believe to be the truth as revealed in the Word of God. These are realistic, operationally scientific supported explanations that allows the same evidence both sides use to fit a Biblical worldview when you take into account historical information contained in the Bible.
Also, there are scientific arguments creationists used to use to defend the veracity of the Bible, but then newer science proved them wrong. So, as good scientists, we no longer use those arguments. But then we're called names because we "changed our tune". Evolutionists change their tune constantly, but they're not berrated for it. Just another thought I'd like to put out there.
I hope this helps. I know I rambled. It's been a long day!!
Sorry, but Creationism isn't scientific. It's obviously based on a Holy Book.
Have you read my earlier posts? Science is science. Creationism is a belief and evolution is a belief (IMO) that both utilize science. Can I make it any plainer?
Have you read my earlier posts? Science is science. Creationism is a belief and evolution is a belief (IMO) that both utilize science. Can I make it any plainer?
Evolution is a belief based on evidence. Creationism is religion.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
