Someone help me: as a Creationist, I have God; as a would be Evolutionist, I have what?

Gottservant

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Hi there,

So of course the natural reaction is "you have faith: good for you". But I think it goes more deeply than that. I think having a God, at the very least, means that I have something for Evolutionists could believe, if only I knew what. I know the theory: call that which was not, as if it were - but does this mean call the Evolution of God (which was not), as though it - the Evolution of God - were? It seems that they are juxtaposed against each other: God does not send an updated Jesus, every time Evolution reboots with a different species! The one sacrifice was needed, that was all.

I mean if you really tried to be different, if you really looked up to Evolutionists, you still could never do it. You would always have the one sacrifice of Jesus, for all the species. It just doesn't make sense. I can't make it make sense. And for that I am told "go read 'Evolution for dummies'". As if somehow you can't explain it simple terms, if you wanted to. I have tried all the angles: is it a law? is it contingent? is it comparable? I just seem to get nowhere. You wouldn't think they expected to learn anything from it, themselves - the way they treat you as if you are the last person on earth to question what 'Evolution' means?

I will tell you something funny; just as I was typing this, a fly crept on to my screen. Rather than shoo the fly away, I circled it with my mouse cursor. At first the fly ignored it, then it started to move a little (and I kept circling it), then it discovered I was trapping it with the mouse cursor and it moved quickly to the text on the screen, where it thought it would be safe,, and I just waited, going left and right with the mouse cursor, when all of a sudden, the fly was put out, that it couldn't escape the mouse cursor - and why? because it was a fly! I was treating the fly as something that was foreign to the computer screen (using the mouse cursor) - so the fly flew! Could that have happened without design? A fly can't understand a computer, there's just no way - but a fly can react to a computer, because a computer's design is not superior, to that of a fly.

And that basically is the point, no part of Creation is subject to any other part. A supercomputer is never going to be smarter than a man, in as much as a man is simply smarter than other men. The man will always react to the computer, no matter how smart the computer gets. The same is true of Evolution. I am never going to be able to understand Evolution, as long as it keeps being a question of greater and greater connectivity; but I am always going to be able to react to it. In reacting, is humility; in humility, is justice. Whatever you want to say about Evolution, it should start from there?

Trying to think, not react.

Thanks.
 

Carl Emerson

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Talking about flies...

Have you considered that flies hit windows are full speed and survive the collision without injury.

Yet there is nothing in nature that occurs naturally equivalent to this event.

So how did they evolve with this ability?

Me thinks something else is going on - maybe a designer?
 
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Nancy Hale

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What if evolution doesn't equal creation? What if it is "the fall"? Everything changed. Before that every land animal ate plants. Every seed grew it's own kind (and they did again after the flood).
Or, take intelligence itself. You say "a man is simply smarter than other men" you hold that as an infallible truth, but what we esteem now would have been a death sentence in prehistoric times. We don't factor in social intelligence, physical intelligence or spiritual intelligence. Is that evolution or a "fall"? I don't think we know how to count intelligence. We are told how it is valued, but it is not true. If you want to understand a thing, you have to understand the foundation the thing sits on.
 
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SkyWriting

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Hi there,So of course the natural reaction is "you have faith: good for you". But I think it goes more deeply than that. I think having a God, at the very least, means that I have something for Evolutionists could believe, if only I knew what.

God planned human evolution and carried out His plans.
Once he had formed the natural man out of the dust
He re-made man into the Spiritual image of God.
 
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Nancy Hale

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I didn't mention the fly because a whole lot of human thought was credited to the fly. With those parameters it could be equally possible the fly was toying with the OP; using some sort of insect mind control to make you follow him around with your mouse pointer until he bored of it.
But, flies can't do that. Flies have boundaries, a point at which they can't cross. We're so sure in this line we don't hesitate to set their offspring on wounds because we know they can not cross their set boundary. They can adapt, but not truly evolve. Instinctively we trust in this.
Also, before the fall, the fly, as it now exists, would be pointless, even cruel; there was no death.
 
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The Barbarian

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Talking about flies...

Have you considered that flies hit windows are full speed and survive the collision without injury.

Yeah. Mice can fall thousands of feet and walk away from it, in most cases. It's one of the benefits of being small. You see, it's not the smack of hitting the wall that causes the problem, it's that if the organism is big enough, most of it keeps moving after front has stopped. Which is bad for the organism. If it has very little mass, the structure is strong enough to resist that crushing.

Yet there is nothing in nature that occurs naturally equivalent to this event.

Lots and lots of things. If you're interested in that, I suggest Steven Vogel's Life's Devices. Fascinating book on biomechanics.

So how did they evolve with this ability?

It's not an ability. It's just physics. You want a real puzzle about flies? Here it is:

Anything flying must stall and fall in order to land. That's why your airliner puts out flaps to spoil lift just before touching the ground. It has to stall to land. Yet flies can land on ceilings. How do they do that? Let me know if you figure it out.

Me thinks something else is going on - maybe a designer?

If by "designer" you mean "laws of physics", yep.
 
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The Barbarian

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But, flies can't do that. Flies have boundaries, a point at which they can't cross. We're so sure in this line we don't hesitate to set their offspring on wounds because we know they can not cross their set boundary. They can adapt, but not truly evolve. Instinctively we trust in this.

Hawaii is a long way from any other land. So most insects never got there before humans brought them in. But two or three species of flies did. And without any competition, they took over many, many niches in those island that would normally be closed to them.

From those two or three species, Hawaii now has a very large percentage of the total number of fruit flies in the world; flies filling those other niches evolved to fit.

Also, before the fall, the fly, as it now exists, would be pointless, even cruel; there was no death.

How would anything eat if not plants? Oh, yes, that would bring in death for the plants. So how did animals eat then? What do you think?
 
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Carl Emerson

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Yeah. Mice can fall thousands of feet and walk away from it, in most cases. It's one of the benefits of being small. You see, it's not the smack of hitting the wall that causes the problem, it's that if the organism is big enough, most of it keeps moving after front has stopped. Which is bad for the organism. If it has very little mass, the structure is strong enough to resist that crushing.



Lots and lots of things. If you're interested in that, I suggest Steven Vogel's Life's Devices. Fascinating book on biomechanics.



It's not an ability. It's just physics. You want a real puzzle about flies? Here it is:

Anything flying must stall and fall in order to land. That's why your airliner puts out flaps to spoil lift just before touching the ground. It has to stall to land. Yet flies can land on ceilings. How do they do that? Let me know if you figure it out.



If by "designer" you mean "laws of physics", yep.

Who designed the Laws of Physics?
 
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Carl Emerson

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Yet flies can land on ceilings. How do they do that? Let me know if you figure it out.
===================
The fly flies upright, close enough to the ceiling, and reaches upward with its front legs. ... The fly release its grip and does a barrel roll to right itself...

Thanks Google !
 
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Nancy Hale

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How would anything eat if not plants? Oh, yes, that would bring in death for the plants. So how did animals eat then? What do you think?
Genesis 1
29 And 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.

30 And 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.

I've heard Eskimos have 50 words for snow and Americans have 13 words for one type of sandwich, so I bolded "wherein there is life" because I think it's placement above plant life suggests it may not be the same type of life OR maybe all plants were like fruit trees, you could eat and not kill - fruitarianism. I don't know, but I do know when death entered the world.
 
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coffee4u

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I don't really know what your thread is about to be honest, except evolutionists and flies? I don't know what they have, hope for more things evolving? Some evolutionists try to marry together evolution and the Bible and have nothing but scriptural pretzel tying.
 
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The Barbarian

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Genesis 1
29 And 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.

30 And 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.

I've heard Eskimos have 50 words for snow and Americans have 13 words for one type of sandwich, so I bolded "wherein there is life" because I think it's placement above plant life suggests it may not be the same type of life OR maybe all plants were like fruit trees, you could eat and not kill - fruitarianism. I don't know, but I do know when death entered the world.

We know what life is, in biological terms, and if any organism that doesn't make its own food, depends on the death of other things. God surely knows this.

So then, if it's not a biological death, what is it? The text tells you what it is. God says to Adam that he will die the day he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam eats, but lives on biologically for many years thereafter. But what does happen is Adam dies a spiritual death that day, suddenly fearing God, aware of good and evil. He's become like God, potentially capable of fellowship with Him. But unable to be truly good, he's now estranged from God, dead in spirit, and unable to save himself.

This is why God sent His Son. If Jesus came to save us from a physical death, He failed. We will all die someday. But we can be saved from that greater and more devastating death if we will only accept His sacrifice for us.

Adam was never immortal; in Genesis, God even expresses concern that he might become so, and prevents it from happening.
 
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The Barbarian

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I don't really know what your thread is about to be honest, except evolutionists and flies? I don't know what they have, hope for more things evolving?

You're putting way too much emphasis on the world. He just made a knowable and suitable world in which beings like us would be created and live. All that matters to salvation is His love that gave us His only Son to save us. It's like someone rescued you from a flood and you want to be critical of the way he painted the boat.

Being an omnipotent creator, He made the universe so that living things would emerge from the earth as He intended. He made living things with the capacity to change over time so that they would be able to live as the world changed. That's all. Nothing more than that.

Some evolutionists try to marry together evolution and the Bible

You might as well marry together protons and the Bible. That's not what the Bible is about, even though protons are an essential part of the world, as evolution is.

Those who try to accept God, and think they must reject parts of His creation have nothing but scriptural pretzel tying.
 
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The Barbarian

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Who designed the Laws of Physics?

No one. The Creator had no need to figure anything out, being omniscient. At least not, if you believe in the Christian God. The "maybe a space alien" designer of the IDers, maybe so.

Which do you think it was?
 
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Carl Emerson

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No one. The Creator had no need to figure anything out, being omniscient. At least not, if you believe in the Christian God. The "maybe a space alien" designer of the IDers, maybe so.

Which do you think it was?

He designed it into creation...
 
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The Barbarian

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Nonsense... design is a celebration of order.

Actually, design is a mental process, figuring things out. It's instructive that engineers are now using evolutionary processes to solve problems that are not well done by design. Genetic algorithms beat design for a large number of complex problems.

Turns out, God knows best, after all.
 
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The Barbarian

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Sounds more like fuzzy logic.

Fuzzy logic is a bit different.
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth values of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1 both inclusive. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false.
Fuzzy logic - Wikipedia

Part of set theory. Apparently, it has a number of useful applications,but I've never used it.

Genetic Algorithms start with a feasible (but not very good) solution, and then "reproduce" a number of solutions, each with a different "mutation" in the original solution. A selection criterion allows only the best fitted solutions to again "reproduce", and the system goes forward until the best solution survives.

Pretty much like it works in living populations.
 
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