Evolution is Not Atheistic

[Graham Lloyd Dull]

Not symbolic, but they can be translated from Hebrew, where they definitely have meaning.

Adam means man, red, or earth. This is because the earth in that place had a reddish tint to it, and the color of skin when Genesis was written also had a reddish tint.

Eve is really supposed to be CHAVA. It's just transliterated very badly.
"The man called his wife's name Chava, because she had become the mother of all the living" (Genesis 3:20). The root of this name is connected with the word Chaya which means living, and the word "Chai" which means life. "Chava" is in causative form – i.e. she caused all the people in the future to live. (source: "Rashi" Genesis 3:20 with "Siftei Chachamim")

Does giving someone a name which has a meaning, mean the person did not actually exist?

Matthew 1:21
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Genesis 3:20
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

Did Jesus exist? Did Eve exist?

 

[SkyWriting]

the online sources only give brief couple of paragraph descriptions of the steps.

Keep running away from the hard work?


The real process of science

 

[Meowzltov]

Today we have a huge variety of life with all of the variations which you described and more, and what it actually proves is that these exist side by side.

That they exist side by side is irrelevant. It simply means that the mutation happened in one place but not in another and both species, the new and the old, had a niche to fill.

 

[Meowzltov]

So what?
.
You talk about evolution all the time.
So what?

Yes. So what. I talk about Adam and Eve figuratively, and I talk about evolution scientifically. So what.

 

[As I was saying]

I suppose even if you are a Christian and a scientist, you go where the money leads you, and check your theology at the door.

I'm guessing though, as I have never worn a white coat.

I'm waiting for a white robe, instead!

Touche!

 

[Meowzltov]

You believe that an eel is half worm/half fish.

I think the first fish were eels. Their resemblence to worms is obvious.

Here is a picture of the worm (Pikaia gracilens) from which all fish (and therefore humans) evolved:

 

[As I was saying]

I think the first fish were eels. Their resemblence to worms is obvious.

Here is a picture of the worm (Pikaia gracilens) from which all fish (and therefore humans) evolved:

My ancestors were humans. Sorry to hear about yours.

 

[As I was saying]

Sand word?

Dune perhaps? Castle? Volleyball?

Sorry a typo. It should be sand worm.

 

[Graham Lloyd Dull]

That they exist side by side is irrelevant. It simply means that the mutation happened in one place but not in another and both species, the new and the old, had a niche to fill.

Let us be very clear about what the fossil record actually reveals.
.
Fossilized fragments of sticks and some leaves in mud-stone show that these elements were present when the mud was settling at that very place.
Marine fossils show that the sediment where they were deposited was in a marine environment.
.
Each fossil bed shows details which in and of themselves only relate to the area in which they are found.
.
It takes a lot of deductions to further conclude that the sticks and leaves evolved from some marine organism.

 

[Meowzltov]

It seems they are surprisingly hard to evolve by random mutation.

I never said the mutation is random. I'm not entirely convinced that genetic drift says it all. It wouldn't bother me if it did, but at present I am in the Theistic Evolution camp.

 

[Meowzltov]

Bologna. Please cite your sources.

I already did. My training as a science educator.

 

[Meowzltov]

To quote David Berlinski, philosopher and mathematician, "To hold such a view [evolution] is an act of faith far beyond anything expected by Christians or Jews. It demands a complete suspension of belief better suited to readers of fairy tales."

Baloney.

 

[Meowzltov]

Does giving someone a name which has a meaning, mean the person did not actually exist?

It's irrelavent to a person's existence. You will find folks who have names with meaning who exist in real life AND who are in fairy tales.

 

[Loudmouth]

Let us be very clear about what the fossil record actually reveals.
.
Fossilized fragments of sticks and some leaves in mud-stone show that these elements were present when the mud was settling at that very place.
Marine fossils show that the sediment where they were deposited was in a marine environment.
.
Each fossil bed shows details which in and of themselves only relate to the area in which they are found.
.
It takes a lot of deductions to further conclude that the sticks and leaves evolved from some marine organism.

You hold a rather common misunderstanding of how fossils are used to test the theory of evolution.

What scientists do is use the theory of evolution to predict what combinations of features we should see in the fossils we do find. For example, if humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with other apes then there should have been transitional forms who had a mixture of features from modern humans and earlier forms of ape. At no point in history were dogs an ancestor of humans, according to the theory of evolution. Therefore, we should not see any species with a mixture of canine and human features. It is these types of predictions that we use to test the theory. When we keep seeing the mixture of features that evolution predicts and a lack of fossils that have a mixture of features that evolution says should not exist, then we conclude that the theory is supported.

 

[Loudmouth]

I never said the mutation is random. I'm not entirely convinced that genetic drift says it all. It wouldn't bother me if it did, but at present I am in the Theistic Evolution camp.

There is also positive and negative selection which is not random with respect to fitness.

 

[Meowzltov]

Keep running away from the hard work?

If I deplored hard work, I would not have visited a dozen websites looking for one with a little more meat.

 

[Jahrooshshalom]

All this to say that there are MANY ways to believe in God yet also believe in evolution.

There is Theological evolution. God is behind all things that change=evolve.

Darwin is often thought to have been a lifelong Christian but he wasn't.
Just to add this about the man:
Charles Darwin: Not An Atheist
Darwin actually spent a more than half of his life as a Christian. "I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age," Darwin said to some dinner guests in 1881, just under a year before his death. Even in 1859, when his most significant work, On the Origin of Species, was published, he was still a believer in a personal God, although he had doubts about the teleological argument that nature is evidence of God.

Nevertheless, in his autobiography, in 1876, Darwin wrote that at the time that he wrote Origin of Species, he was still very much a believer because of "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist."

 

[Meowzltov]

I suppose even if you are a Christian and a scientist, you go where the money leads you, and check your theology at the door.

Oh good heavens! Thank goodness so few scientists are corrupted by money. When they are, it's only a matter of time before future experimentation finds them out and they are exposed for the non-scientists they really are. Remember the Piltdown Man? It wasn't long before the discovery of a mountain of TRUE transitional forms exposed the fraud.

 

[Meowzltov]

My ancestors were humans. Sorry to hear about yours.

My ancestors were also humans... and primates, and tetrapods, and chordates, and invertabrates, and pond scum, all the way back to the dust of the earth.

 

[Graham Lloyd Dull]

If I deplored hard work, I would not have visited a dozen websites looking for one with a little more meat.

Pollen is found in Precambrian metamorphic rock from the Roraima formation in South America ‘dated’ at 1.7 Ga old.
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In the orthodox evolutionary timeline, pollen is supposed to be over 1 Ga younger than these rocks supposedly are. Numerous attempts to explain away the presence of pollen have been made. Contamination from the environment has been cited, but this simply doesn’t fit with the geology of the Roraima formation or its surroundings.