Evolution in your opinion

Originally posted by sampo
anybody know what the deal with all the HTML code is in my post above? Help me! I tried to edit it and it did not work.

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What's with you and your fancy colors?

Originally posted by foolsparade
ever since I was a child,I always had doubt that a God just created everything.I never accepted the stories told to me in sunday school.These stories always sounded "made up" for some reason.as I have gotten older I am more convinced now that we did rise from the mud.I have always had a problem with unanswered questions being tossed to a God.We as humans owe it to ourselves to try to look for answers and not give up or pawn the question over to God.The mere fact of the amazing diversity of life is almost to astounding for even a God to have created,in my opinion.300,000 species of beetles? if there is a god then who or what created him?the whole "God theory" seems so much more far fetched.in my opinion...

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If God is a theory to you and science is also a bunch of theories to you, then why didn't you just accept God but science?

thienAn,I dont look at science as just a bunch of theories,I am not or ever going to bail out on science simply because they dont have the keys to the universe yet.This is what is so fascinating about this,and like I mentioned before,the "god concept" seems to me more harder to imagine.even though I am a strong supporter of the imagination.

Originally posted by Stormy

I do not mind speaking of my Faith, but for now I would still like to hear from the others on their ideas about evolution. I hope we can get this thread back on track.

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My ideas: I think evolution is probably the best of the available explanations for life as we know it and observe it. It doesn't address motivation, or anything else, and it doesn't really need to; the point is that, so far as we know, the universe is such that life like us might well evolve somewhere. Maybe other kinds evolve elsewhere; we don't know yet.

I don't see this as a problem for my faith any more than the round world model is; I long since accepted that some parts of the Bible communicate spiritual messages in terms of the physical understanding of people of the time.

Augustine was right; when we argue with the measurable qualities of the world, we drive people away from Christ.

No, I have indeed read your posts, and understand your position. My reference was to this line.... 'I do not have faith that random accidents made by brainless bits of goop created all that we know.' My rebuttal there was on the lines of "Yet you have the faith to believe in it all being created by an unseen being who was careful enough not to leave one shred of evidence as to his existence." (I am paraphrasing myself for clarity there.) I understand that you are of the mindset that evolution is improvement on gods creation. I apologize if I am reading too much into things, but this is your stance as I have perceived it from the start.

When I was a child, I thought the way my parents taught me to think, and the way my pastor taught me to think. I thought that if I questioned the word of god that I was doomed to burn in hell for all eternity. I no longer think that way, but my parents still do, and always will. They refuse to question. Why should they? The god scenario neatly sums up the answer to any question that might present itself. That was never good enough for me, and anyone who cares to do some open minded research on the subject of evolution, regardless of faith, could not possibly dismiss it as nonsense. I am glad that you are at least more open minded than some I have encountered.

And mold is not a miraculous thing. Mold is a very simple thing that can easily be explained. It was, perhaps, not a good analogy - but I guess the point I was trying to make was that to those with no scientific knowledge of mold, or much else for that matter, might easily suppose that it was the work of a divine creator, or the devil, or any number of untestable assumptions. Kinda like the writers of the bible. Things had to be explained somehow (IE: How we got here), and it was all to easy to do so by means of divine intervention. They certainly did not have the knowledge to do so scientifically. To me, creationism is nothing more than a lame attempt to reconcile biblical accounts with the overwhelming evidence presented by the scientific community.

I have no problem with the idea of evolution and natural selection, except that it couldn't have happened so perfectly on its own. Things in this Universe will go from states of order to disorder if left alone, but in this case, life went from disorder to order. By itself? I don't buy it.  Not to mention the problem of incredibly complex biological structures that take a leap of the imagination to think that they could evolve from star dust...

Originally posted by seebs
My ideas: I think evolution is probably the best of the available explanations for life as we know it and observe it. It doesn't address motivation, or anything else, and it doesn't really need to; the point is that, so far as we know, the universe is such that life like us might well evolve somewhere. Maybe other kinds evolve elsewhere; we don't know yet.

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Okay, so, what did we evolved from?

Why then would a perfect and all-knowing god, once he saw that his creation was good, need evolution at all? 

God does not want you to find the truth. The truth is contrary to biblical teachings. If, by chance, you are saying that you do not rely on the bible as a source for your faith, then I would have to say that you are fooling yourself. Why? Because you believe in the christian god. You could not do that were it not for the bible. You would not even know of the teachings of jesus. Therefore I must assume that you, as many others, use the bible as a basis for your beliefs, and dismiss parts of it that are erroneous. If that is the case, how do you decide what is correct and what is incorrect? What is the determining factor? The bible is chocked full of tales of things that could not have happened. How then could someone think that the god spoken of in the same bible is the creator and saviour of the world? What makes that true? I am not downing you, just curious. Science is truth, or at least it makes an attempt to find the truth. You say that my problem lies in man's comprehension of the bible. Well, who do you think wrote the bible? It was not god. Jesus never put pen to paper. It is all second (or sometimes third and fourth, etc.) hand tales. The bible itself is a comprehension of humans based on their understanding of the nature of things, and also largely based on tales that were around long before the writers of the bible were. How can it not be misread by humans when it is the product of humans. Not even the writers stories are consistent in most case. Same stories, different interpretations. The bible should never be used as a basis for anything. especially ones faith and beliefs, IMHO. It cannot even really be used as an historical document.

If the world is evidence of god, then why do we not understand god? We understand why the world is the way it is, and we further understand (for the most part) how it works. We are learning more everyday. In your scenario, god is the elusive pot at the end of the rainbow. The closer we get, the further away it is. Why would a loving and caring god not make himself known somehow? A lot of blood has been shed over this very thing, and arguments and hatred are perpetuated continually over the discussion of the existence or non-existence of god. Sounds more like a prankster than a loving, caring god to me.

I am not trying to belittle your faith. In fact, I admire it, because the ability to have enough faith to believe in something that you cannot verify is very elusive to me. I am not trying to debate you either. I am just adding my observations from another standpoint. To me, the plain and simple fact is, the search for truth is in stark contrast to the teachings of christianity, which by its nature provides you with all the answers in one neat little volume.

Originally posted by ThienAn

Okay, so, what did we evolved from?

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How far back do you want to go? Most immediately? Probably something similar to homo erectus, or an earlier homo sapiens, depending on how finnicky you are. A study of the hominid tree gets us back a ways.

You want to go back further? Eventually to early multicellular life, and to single-celled organisms before that. Depending on how life formed, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, we go back to particles of chemical compounds floating in the primordial sea... That would be the dust of the earth, no?

It's a wonderful allegory.

Originally posted by seebs


How far back do you want to go? Most immediately? Probably something similar to homo erectus, or an earlier homo sapiens, depending on how finnicky you are. A study of the hominid tree gets us back a ways.

You want to go back further? Eventually to early multicellular life, and to single-celled organisms before that. Depending on how life formed, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, we go back to particles of chemical compounds floating in the primordial sea... That would be the dust of the earth, no?

It's a wonderful allegory.

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You believe this even though you have faith in God?

  Most Christians do. You knew that, right? That most Christians are theistic evolutionists? Virtually all Catholics + liberal and moderate Protestants.

   Personally, I've always thought that evolution was a considerably more elegant and Godly way of creating life. It takes real skill.

   The 7 day Creation of Genesis reads, if taken literally, like stage-magic. *Poof* it's there...Big deal. Now, doing something tricky and complex over billions of years...another matter entirely.

 

Originally posted by ThienAn

You believe this even though you have faith in God?

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Yes.

When I was a kid, the evidence for evolution was all around me; noticing the way in which we have the same basic joints as cats, even though we're not otherwise much like them, was enough to convince me. It took me a lot longer to come to terms with God, because people kept insisting that the Bible had to be *literal*, and that led to problems with the flat, immovable, earth... Eventually, I realized that the Bible isn't *intended* as a science textbook.

When I was a kid, my parents did their best to tell me the truth about things I asked about - but they couldn't always explain things in ways I'd understand. So, sometimes, I had beliefs that, while reasonable ways to think about something, weren't *really* true.

When we were young, God gave us simple answers that we could handle. That doesn't mean He doesn't want us to seek more deeply; He delights in us, as He made us, and we are *CURIOUS* little creatures. He would not have made us so curious if He didn't want us to be curious.

So... I don't have a problem with accepting that the creation stories, and other "early" parts of the Bible, sometimes contain a bit more of our stories, and a bit less of the physical truth. The essentials remain; we were carefree once, but then we learned of good and evil, and death became a part of our world. Now, we suffer, and we can choose to do right or wrong... and the whole thing comes into play.

One of the reasons I have faith is the sheer beauty of science and mathematics; it's so *COOL*. I can't help but be grateful for it. It is a source of joy to me to look at the subtle ways in which we and other mamals reflect our shared heritage. God is truly great.

The creation myth is more than allegory. It's a representation of truth in an idealized form. Genesis tells us that God directly made the earth and everything in it. It's a way of telling us that even though what scientists perceive as "nature" blindly evolved into the world as we know it, it was God who guided the world's creation and development to the place where we are now. Only his wisdom and providence could have crafted the world in the way that he did (through evolution, progression and development). Now that's beautiful.

Fair enough. I guess I still see that as within the scope of "allegory". I don't see God as having bipedal physical form, or actually making His mouth into a shape and then expelling air through it; I think that's allegory for what He really did.

(Generally, it's felt that God *did* have a physical form later, but it was much later.)

seebs,

I'm not criticizing what you said about allegory, just expanding it. Trust me, myth and allegory aren't quite the same, but they are certainly complementary.

Okay, we're all happy then. I do agree, there's a certain amount of pure myth in it - but very informative myth nonetheless.